Independent Political Bloggers

Safe European homes: After the crash

2012-02-15T18:03:00.002Z

The Kopp Publishing Company recently held a series of lectures in Germany to discuss the impending doom of the EU and the chocolate pennies which currently pass for its currency. It was an ensemble piece of financiers, economists and casino bankers, but amidst the advice and prognostication came a warning which I suspect a lot of writers outside the MSM know perfectly well to be accurate:

"[Udo] Ulfkotte warned of impending unrest in Europe, which we can also expect in Germany. Many in the hall gasped when the secret service expert reported: Unnoticed by media and public, 'special action forces are being prepared all over Europe to forcefully put down the expected social protests. Until a few days ago, reported the ex-correspondent of FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), not even the parliamentary representatives charged with responsibility for control of the secret services had known that there has for years been a secret European organization of informants whose target above all is EU opponents and critics. “The work groups form cross-border teams, which, for example, are supposed to observe potential ringleaders and plant contact people in their environment.'"

[Hat tip: Gates of Vienna]

When the grand guignol debacle of the EU finally hits the tarmac with its undercarriage firmly locked in the stowed position, there will be blood. Our police, of course, showed themselves to be utterly useless during last summer's rioting. European police, however, the forces of naturally fascist countries such as Spain, Italy and France, will not spare the night-stick and might be less inclined to act like social workers on a lunchbreak from their latest racial diversity course.

Oh Dear!

2012-02-10T16:43:00.000Z

The EU Looking Very Wobbly!

Right on their doorstep! No BBC coverage, of course!

Right on their doorstep and in the middle of the beloved EU AGW weather of deep, bone chilling weather! Add to this the German's apparent desire to dump Greece, after having brought them to this point and suddenly the edifice is cracking! Add this gem patriotic policemen , an anathema to the EU Dictatorship and it really is getting bumpy!

It may well be that as more and more "States" struggle to clothe, feed and shelter their citizens, due to the oppressive and deluded scams of this unelected nightmare in Brussels, the tinder box will ignite big time. After all the imagined wealth of the EU largesse is all built on worthless paper. That bog rol has then been "loaned" to keep German and French business ticking along.

Now this ridiculous behaviour is exposed. They can huff and puff, print more toilet paper but when all's said and done the real wealth and value stems from the work and or the savings of its people. Suddenly these very people are asking questions as to what the cretins have done and are doing, with the remaining dregs of their citizens holdings.

What is needed is a period of isolation and a reduction of useless central control. If they don't break up the EU soon, it will be done for them. Indeed it's already happening. God speed to all those fighting at last this political and corporate cartel of imbeciles.

The Enslavemt.

2012-01-19T13:32:00.000Z

Marching To The Ovens.

Jews are forced to undress prior to their execution by Latvian police on the beach near Liepaja.

Just look at this dreadful picture very carefully. An almost matter of fact scene disguising the terrible horror it represents. A further picture is of children stumbling to their execution, indeed State sanctioned murder, look hard at this surreal and nightmare situation.

Both pictures represent utter despair and total loss of hope, dignity or humanity. Just place your own mind in theirs. Impossible, isn't it? Well this awful atrocity was decreed by an all powerful, mighty state. It has been the blighted behaviour of "man's inhumanity to man" forever. It always begins with the crazed political obsessions of one or several individuals.

When these despicable creatures get a grip on power the next step is to infect the legions they will require to fulfil their needs. Such as these. Just one example as to how the disease of sadism is recruited for evil causes. So often these "causes" have been presented through incessant propaganda as the "only" way.

Thus only a small effort is needed to recognise the fanatical pursuit of an "only way". Whatever means are used to stamp this authority on an unwilling peoples is first enshrined in legalese and then punished accordingly. Eventually persuasion through indoctrination has to give way to the scenes above.

If you can hold onto the horror and then listen to the seemingly benign clip below you might, just might glimpse the connection. It would seem however that such a glimpse, such an awareness of what may well lie ahead, is beyond the pliant, uncaring masses. Even beyond their pompous and dismissive politicians. The latter so willing to embed The EU State in the certainty that their families and women will not face the fate I have shown They may get, in the years ahead, a very nasty surprise.

So back to the clip. One man cries mournfully for a halt to the dark future that is inevitable when directed under the auspices of the second. The latter's words are, behind the legalese, a death knell to any hope of democracy. His body language and words are, if you carefully listen and watch, pointing inevitably to the scenes in the photographs. Many will laugh at such comparisons. Just as happened in the 1930s the majority failed to see what was coming. It suited them not to. Ring any bells?

Plagues And Disease Have No Boundaries.

2011-12-23T11:40:00.000Z

A looters group photograph.

You expect corruption to be rife in the town halls of our blighted and miserable cities. But this black death of morality is sadly, like all diseases, not confined to those bastions of greed, nepotism and patronage. Even in the sleepy town of Leominster and the rest of Herefordshire, with its wide pastures and green fields, rolling countryside and idyllic settings, we see the looting and corruption so beloved of our political classes.

Maybe this plague on a poor, sparsely populated and trusting environment was introduced by an urban, smug and superior class of animal, eptitomised by North Herefordshire MP, Bill Wiggin and wholly embraced by its dubious "nasty party" Conservative Association.

Let's look briefly at the stomach churning goings on - all a matter of public record.

The Conservatives took control of Herefordshire County Council back in 2007. They shared a coalition with Independent Councillors in the four years prior to that. Councillor Roger Phillips was the council leader for eight years. After 2007 he shared that leadership with his Deputy, Mrs June French, a retired council officer from London.

Notwithstanding generous allowances for those heady posts, such largesse for their "public service" obviously was not enough. As with council officials and their elected thieves and looters all over the land, it was decided the battering ram to break down the doors of morality and decency would be in the form of "limited companies" created by the council. Their friends, developers and a whole host of nefarious contacts, not least chief executives, were seduced by the lure of secretive jobs and placements, well hidden from the decent but gullible victims of their cash cows.

I give you just two examples. A veritable tip of the iceberg our weak local and national press fail to determine or are part of. Hereford Futures Limited, members include Mr Roger Phillips. A little more spadework might determine his remuneration and status. An enterprise formed from his time as Leader of The Council. A major remit of this "limited to pals and moneybags" Company is a massive building development in the heart of Hereford City. Since this post was first considered Mr Charles Ingleby and Councillor Roger Phillips have both terminated their directorships! However the new Council leader and Chief Executive remain directors. What, I wonder are their remunerations? Bull earns a massive six figure salary and significant pension entitlements. Jarvis will be on very large incomes from his councillor expenses, committee and leadership emoluments.

On the board are city speculator friends, property developers and those blessed with secretive powers and influence. I'm sure deep in the bowels of this "mint" root will be some startling names.

Then let's look at Phillip's former Deputy Leader, Mrs June French. Her altruistic yearnings were thrown hastily away in May, 2011 as she quietly stepped down after many years in Herefordshire Council. One of her last portfolio enterprises was the creation of yet another "limited" Company. Limited to friends and cohorts, of course. Though taking on board the newly stood down Deputy leader, in accordance with "the rules" this expensive advert had to be taken out! Jobs for the boys and girls.

Another dubious character in this pantomime of corruption is Annie Caulder. Note this,

"Senior stakeholders have been involved throughout and subject to final approval from JMT, HHT management team, Cabinet, PCT and Trust Boards in September, a procurement exercise for one or more strategic partners can commence. We estimate that at best we will have implemented the new arrangements by Spring 2010 and at the latest by Summer 2010. To make the change and do it within these aggressive time scales we will
need to rapidly build a transition team that includes; commercial, programme management, human
resources and change management skills. We intend to appoint a commercial manager and shared services director as early as possible."

That is taken from this document. One wholly written by Ms Caulder. An exercise overseen by the "Cabinet", of which Ms June French was Deputy Leader member.

Search deeper and you see Bull, the Chief Executive and his friends on several private company boards. Now even on a Council's Chief Executive salary of £226,700, you can bet payments are made for these positions elsewhere. Quite disgustingly dreadful greed.

Then we hear of this. No qualms whatsoever of stating the architect of this Company as a councillor is now its chairman! Furthermore the priapic Bull is also on board!

This location gives a splendid flavour of that rather nasty taste. Undoubtedly tip of an iceberg. Just to add further to the symptoms of this plague, the author of the link was hounded from his home and forced into "purdah" because he dared to challenge these looters. Censure documents were forged by town councillors against his efforts to quell this outbreak of black corruption.

Particularly their probable Brigand in Chief, Wiggin. More public outcry, well whimpering, is here: read and weep. As a sidebar, Brigadier Peter Jones, forger in chief of Leominster, County Councillor and another "grab what you can" and run away from any spotlight, looter, was also found to be receiving many thousands of pounds in expenses for his "volunteer" work! His sign off on those payments, a council employee, resigned smartly to protect his pension, when challenged.A further issue and scary scenario is highlighted here.

So there you have it. If Herefordshire is this mired in such raping of the public purse, how many billions are we seeing looted nationwide? I would suggest, collectively, enough to considerably reduce our £150 billion deficit, such is the scale of this accepted criminality and fraudulent gang of "robber barons".

Herefordshire people are poor by national standards. They are vulnerable to these blow ins with their endemic, urban trained corrupt practices. People probably deluded enough to feel superior in their expertise. I suppose they are when it comes to multi-million pound rip offs of this weak and poor County. Sadly it just mirrors British bureaucracy from top to bottom. I just pray they have difficulty sleeping and hiding their tax liabilities.

A Very Simple Guide To The European Union.

2011-12-08T16:01:00.000Z

It Was Stupid In The First Place.

Now, after billions of articles, opinions and wasted wealth, It's

As Fucked As It Ever Was!

When Salvage is worth the price.

2011-12-06T03:30:00.005Z

Whatever The Salvage.

Even as a group they are behaving differently!

"To operate successfully, the ERM requires broadly convergent inflation rates in participating countries.5 However, different productivity growth rates and convergent inflation rates 'would almost inevitably imply an unequal rate of growth in real incomes' reinforcing pressure on 'employment in the country with a slower real growth rate than in the faster-growing partner.... Thus, ERM membership would involve long-term adjustment costs which might not be politically tolerable, even if such costs could be legitimated by the language of so-called global economic commitments."

Read this, from which the quote is taken, substitute the euro for ERM and then see how history has taught the idiots but nothing. The constant scaremongering surrounding a collapse of the eurozone single currency is a nonsense. Europe engaged in over five years of mutual destruction on an epic scale. Today's generations have little idea of that horror.

So when contemplating the fear perpetuated by the rubbish which passes for politicians today remember, their only agenda is for themselves and their perceived power and superiority. Sure the collapse of the EU would be bad for them. They could even end up in prison. For the rest of us it's pretty shitty anyway. Little hope for a better future, sod all sense of security and societies throughout Europe beggared by those claiming to know better. Trust me, the sooner this whole shameful project is ditched the better for all of us.

As for those morons who got us here and their corporate and banking pals, all in cahoots with gangsters, piano wire is too good for them!

The folly of the exploiters

2011-11-29T12:21:00.003Z

A greater German than any living today, Immanuel Kant, posed a simple question in 1781 in his famous Critique of Pure Reason: What can I know? For those of us for whom media studies means studying the media rather than two hungover lectures a week and the occasional special-needs circus of a student demo, it's a good question. But for us, the question reduces to; What will the media let us know?
We now know that the European project was a grand folly, that the Greeks lied about their bona fides in order to ride the gravy train of the euro, that you cannot transmute the base metal of fiscal union into the glittering gold of political union and, oh yes, that the MSM was either clueless about all of this or willingly connived in covering up this Emperor-sized Ponzi scheme.
We also know that anything even vaguely resembling democracy - demos; the people, kratos; power - is viewed by the EU elites as though it were a soiled nappy. The last Greek to tentatively suggest a referendum over EU policy was back tending his olive grove before he could say autos ho Sokrates.
But more than anything we know that our political leaders have a quasi-autistic belief in their own unassailable correctness. The various, increasingly shrill, pronouncements on the inherent rightness and indubitable fortitude of the European project remind me powerfully of the opening to The Qu'ran:

"This book is not to be doubted."

How much more, and for how much longer, will ordinary people be led into socio-economic chaos because of the delusional belief systems of a self-appointed [don't make me laugh by mentioning their respective elections] cabal of Enlightenment deniers?
Almost exactly a century after Kant's masterpiece, in 1880, another great German, Nietzsche, had the following to say in his little-known essay The Wanderer and his Shadow:

"The exploitation of the worker was, it has now been realised, a piece of stupidity, an exhausting of the soil at the expense of the future, an imperilling of society. Now we have already almost a state of war; and the cost of keeping the peace, of concluding treaties and acquiring trust, will henceforth in any event be very great, because the folly of the exploiters was very great and of long duration." [Section 268]

World Leaders' Guide To Debt.

2011-11-21T18:10:00.000Z

More Debt.

Headlines offer us this gem, “Markets worldwide have tumbled on fears over global debt “ and the answer is, “Meanwhile there were reports the European Commission will discuss so-called eurobonds, in which the eurozone issues debt for all its members.”

I am astounded that these idiots can't understand that if you are bowed down and cowed with debt, you have to stop trying to borrow and gamble your way out. These worthless "bonds" are not promises to pay the bearer anymore because it begs the question, "With what". The answer is future growth earnt by future earnings and production. At least that used to be the plan.

What is not considered is that this plan is no longer valid. Bonds due for maturity now, used in the past to fund vote winning bubbles and booms, are in danger of default today. As Bonkers Midget Byrne said "there's no money left". The cost of building this bankrupt EU is a major factor as to where all the money has gone.

Not only on buildings, bureaucracy and bungs but into a vast web of corruption that is still not fully understood. So what's to happen? My view and one shared by many, one example here but there are many more, is that it is already in it's death throes.

One thing is for certain, all this debt will cause pain and suffering. Just as post military conflict does. We can but hope that the rich and mighty who have profited so far are forced to suffer with the rest of us. I'm no socialist or communist leftie pillock but surely any sensible brain can figure out that the obscenity of colossal individual fortunes is not enhanced by the starvation and deprivation of millions and millions of human beings. Let's face it, politically motivated, corporate greed has got us to this point. Unless the architects are punished alongside the builders flattened under the rubble of this collapse, there is little hope of a new direction and single storey buildings.

I close with this thought. Globalisation was created to spawn the "Too big to fail" meme. Guess what? It isn't, any more that than the EU. A grand plan, about to show us all that its poor philosophy and its inherent weakness, is run and was created by, small minds. Some things are simply too big. Debt is one of them!

Fracking

2011-11-04T20:19:00.000Z

I’ve written about this before. (And no, it’s not a sex tale).
It’s about extracting natural gas from deep shale rock formations. Last Sunday there was a long article in the Daily Mail’s colour supplement.
From the article:

Here are two visions of the future.
The first one lies at the end of a muddy track in the village of Banks, a 20-minute drive from Preston, Lancashire. It consists of a derrick about 60ft high, a few temporary buildings, a generator and some specialist machinery in a fenced square compound.
Powering the derrick and the drill at its centre is an eerily quiet electric motor. Today, on the first Friday of October, the bit it turns at the end of the drill pipe lies about a mile beneath our feet, boring steadily downwards at a rate of up to 500ft a day, depending on the hardness of the strata. It’s heading for a thick deposit of carboniferous shale, a rock made from the compressed mud which lay on a prehistoric seabed more than 300 million years ago, its upper edge some 7,500ft below the dark green fields of ripening cauliflower that surround the compound.
Locked within the fissures inside that rock is an immense quantity of natural gas – virtually pure, unadulterated methane, of a quality so high it could be pumped direct to domestic and industrial users, and to electricity generating stations……………………….

And

The second vision is taking shape at the end of the Thames Estuary, where the foundations are being laid for the 217 turbines of the London Array, the world’s biggest offshore wind farm.
Covering 90 square miles, this too will have the capacity to generate 1GW (one billion watts). The turbines’ construction has been priced at £2 billion, four times as much as the Kentish gas plant, although this does not include the cost – perhaps a further £500 million – of connecting them to the National Grid, via 300 miles of undersea high-voltage cables.
Without the labyrinthine system of ‘green’ taxes and Government subsidies known as the Renewables Obligation, which is already adding an estimated £100 to the cost of every British household’s electricity bill, and an average 20 per cent to the charges paid by businesses, the wind farm could never be built, because it would be hopelessly uneconomic…………….

Which one do you think makes sense?
How it’s done animation Click on the Link to see the active Animation
And the scenario in the sidebar

If only

Following on.

2011-11-01T10:14:00.000Z

From Mark On Saturday.

Mark's excellent piece on Saturday has prompted me to pick up on his theme of the declining Chatterati, (a word coined by Oldrightie) and the rise of more eclectic bloggers. The clip shows such a significant parallel to today but with the added impetus of today's communication capabilities even John Lennon would have embraced to powerful effect .As it was his music did the work now available, for now at least, to all of us.

Now I shall revert to my passionate feelings about The European Union. Here we have a mighty, shadowy and unwholesome construct dominating all our lives. That includes the whole planet, gambling with a collapsed monetary system and banking collapse heavily brought about by the EU construct.

This failed edifice to hubris and rank stupidity, never properly thought through and designed to garner all that is flawed about human nature and ignore all that is good, has reached it's inevitable finale. In great measure it's billions of euros propaganda machine and cosy media control has not succeeded in its Orwellian belief because of the Internet and blogging.

A perfect example is the paltry few hours the great salvation of last week's debt parcel passing concept lasted. Within less than one working day the parcel was placed firmly on an empty chair in Beijing. Its sister smaller but lethal packet was dropped by the Greeks and a referendum announced likely to be the EU's camel straw.

Now in Lennon's time all this frantic musical chairs would have been presented with a massive dose of media led spin and hype. The reality of the desperate scenario hidden from most of us. Only the steady decline in our life styles would have eventually been noticed but the causes less well observed.

The selfish greed of Corporate earth, the smugness of luxurious banker life styles, aped by politicians, would all have ducked under the radar. The "occupy" protests, love them or hate them, are children of the communication revolution. Just as the Arab spring, Greek economic torture, Libyan and Syrian despot cradles of vicious killing and evil, would all have been less than obvious without blogging. Where occasionally highlighted they would have been grease stained within hours or swapped for reality TV.

The suggested growing future where you either follow blogging or join in to make a difference is one that appeals to many. It is becoming a medium for "left" and "right" to discover jointly held morals and bring together the best of every philosophy and creed. Not a good recipe for those who would govern, is it. Their mantra is divide and conquer. One step forward as one ideology takes power, quickly followed by several steps backwards when usurped by their pals purporting to be of a different hue, yet much the same in their passion for power at any price.

As The EU wobbles and shakes, soon to tumble like the Twin Towers, we can be grateful that the aftermath will likely be an emerging world of greater hope and fairness. We can but try. We, so far, still have the tools. The pen may yet prove mightier than the sword. Or the keyboard more powerful than nuclear bombs!

Politically correct games: Even a draw sees both sides lose

2011-10-29T08:26:00.003+01:00

The blogosphere is the tiniest of rebellions. My favourite blog title - and a daily mine of erudite nuggets - is Samizdata. Samizdat was the Russian word for the practice among Soviet citizens of distributing, passing on and exchanging illicit, anti-governmental literature. A man who would know about the value of illicit, dissident writing was Vladimir Bukovsky, and he defined Samizdat as follows:

"I myself create it,
edit it,
censor it,
publish it,
distribute it, and ...
get imprisoned for it."

With regards to the last line in the context of the blogosphere, not yet. But this is not the Soviet Bloc of the 1960s and 1970s. Not yet. Except, perhaps, in an increasingly pronounced difference between two tribes of, in informational terms, hunter-gatherers. The disapora is summed up by Richard North:

"Political society is splitting two ways – those who read the blogs, and the little lambs who suck the pap."

EU Referendum's sketch for an epitaph sums up something known for years by those who only read the MSM for fun. But why is it that the bloggers have consistently trumped the MSM when it comes to accurate and predictive commentary, particularly over the Eurozone? How has Samizdat been proven, again and again, to be right where the Fourth Estate has been consistently behind the curve?
On a related subject, although Douglas Carswell may not find himself hanging in poster form on the walls of EU Referendum's war cabinet room, he thickens the plot:

"The internet has started to democratise comment and opinion. Thanks to blogs like ConservativeHome, Guido Fawkes, Left Foot Forward and Coffee House, the old aristocracy of opinion formers is being displaced. Bloggers - who have to be re-elected by thousands of mouse clicks every day [my italics] - tend to be accountable for their analysis in the way that many columnists writing for a newspapers, or TV pundits, often never seem to be.

For accurate political analysis, go online."

The internet has much in common with President Barack Obama in that politicians who once used to queue up to sing its praises and bask in its glow are keeping rather quiet now that reality has done its usual audit. With Obama, now the fairy dust has all but been shaken off his wings, the political class see no furtherance of their careers in jostling for photo-op proximity. With the internet, politicians of every stripe are doubtless horrified by the democratising effect of, in particular, weblogging. You can tell, because politicians never, ever mention blogging. Unless, of course, they have their own blog. How I miss racing across the lawn of the internet years ago to visit The Rt Hon David Miliband at his faux-personable, bland, widely-travelled blog. Mr Miliband - or his BlogBot - was a little off-putting in his insistence on referring to 'doing a blog' when he meant writing a post, and it all seemed worryingly fecal. But he won me back by answering every single facetious question I ever asked in the comments section, with one exception. I asked whether, in the case of a repatriated British inmate of Guantanamo Bay committing a fatal terrorist attack in Britain, the families of any victims would be able to sue the British government. Answer came there none... But politicians keep very anodyne blogs nowadays. The king is elsewhere; we must turn to the court.
The political temperature concerning the blogosphere can be taken by examining the handmaidens to the political classes, the journalists, Peter Oborne's courtiers.
While blogging seems acceptable to the political right of the media - such as it is - the left-inclining arm of the press immediately took the weapons from the wall. Here, from 2008, Madeleine Bunting voices her fears of a voice for the journalistically untutored:

"Aggression, abuse and contempt are now the normal currency of debate among strangers on blogs. Last week two prominent columnists, David Aaronovitch and Linda Grant, added their bewilderment to the growing chorus of those arguing that public debate on the internet is being strangled at birth by the quantity of personal abuse and bullying."

As was, I believe, pointed out at the time, Ms Bunting was confusing blogging with comments left on blogs. But she was not a lone operative in the blogger witch-trials [in which Guido Fawkes, appropriately enough, featured prominently].
Inevitably, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown - a sort of MSM bargain-basement Ghandi - shrieks out her opinions here and, in the wake of the media outrage over phone hacking, those opinions may require re-reading:

"Newspaper telephone hackers are big babies when compared to those who practice the dark arts in the blogosphere."

It should be stated that she wrote this in September 2010, long before the News of the World scandal, but it exemplifies a comfortable, familiar lack of ability in Brown when it comes to feeling the collar of the zeitgeist.
Jackie Ashley, another of the left's attack harpies, finds the blogosphere a family with the wrong members in control:

"Again, I am speaking impressionistically, not scientifically: but has not the rise of the internet coincided with a rise of the men’s magazine culture? Blogworld is the future, and it will not be resisted; but at this stage in its development, it seems dominated by rightwing [sic] male individualists and libertarians."

Batting for the chaps, Jackie's wayward spouse Andrew Marr also got very cross indeed about those impertinent bloggers and their unkempt, rustic ways. 'Superinjunction' Marr informs a grateful readership that:

"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people... OK – the country is full of very angry people. Many of us are angry people at times. Some of us are angry and drunk."

A word of warning concerning Marr's comments on the physiognomy of bloggers. I have linked to the piece, but it is accompanied by a picture of Marr's milk-curdling, clock-stopping, mirror-imperilling face.
No critique from the left would be complete without the Maharani of Islington, Polly Toynbee. Here, from 2008, the redoubtable Dizzy reminds Toynbee that opinionated political writing is not always done in exchange for an unrealistic paycheck:

"Have just been watching Sky News, and, besides them showing a screenshot of this blog which was taken just at the moment when the top post had a typo in the title (typical of me really), Polly Toynbee has just been saying that the Tory blogs are all funded by the Tories and awash with money.

Polly, I'm not paid to do this. I'm paid to work elsewhere (not in politics) and this blog gets done in between that. No one is funding me, I'm skint. I have an overdraft, a huge credit card bill, and am facing possible negative equity very shortly as the house prices collapse."

It's an engrossing debate for those of us engrossed by politics which is not spoon-fed but actively obtained from a variety of sources. Those whose intellectual willingness allows them to pluck memes like fruit from different orchards are now forming a distinct sub-blogosphere. Whether you are left or right will soon be about as relevant as whether you are a Platonist or an Aristotelean. The battle is now between the political/media class and the rest of us, the excluded, los desaparecidos. Bloggers of all political stripes should forget sniping at one another and their best minds should train their sights elsewhere.
I'll leave the last word to Juan Williams. Juan was a journalist fired by NPR for failing to adhere to politically correct orthodoxies [the same thing is happening in Germany, incidentally. Hat tip to Gates of Vienna] and has an excellent, must-read piece on the tyranny of false political sectarianism. A sample:

"The biggest lesson for me has come from the endless stream of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, who tell me they can’t believe the constant pressure in politics these days to keep quiet, shut up and bite their tongue for fear of being called a bigot, a crazy right-winger or a socialist lefty... Americans across all political, social and racial lines tell me they resent this political straitjacket. They know that if they speak their mind, admit their fears, hopes, feelings, they risk being told they are not a good Republican or not a good Democrat. They fear being told they are not a good Christian for their views on abortion; not a good Jew for their views on Israel; not a good black man if they question President Obama; not a good Muslim if they condemn Islamic terrorism without any qualification. At every turn, people fear being told they are lacking in principle for simply avoiding political boxes and opening themselves to listen to the other side of an issue and engage in honest debate."

Whatever the independent political blogosphere is, it must not be politically conformist. Left and right has become us and them. Williams gives his reasons for being fired. He is responding to a question from a fellow journalist as to whether the latter was right to have been outspoken concerning 9/11. Williams replied:

"I told him I was not going to play politically correct games."

Chinese Lessons, Anyone?

2011-10-28T11:10:00.000+01:00

The Economic Wars Continue.

The concept of a New World Order is spoken of regularly throughout the internet. The European Federal Statehood project, regardless of any other considerations, is definitely a construct designed to further political and corporate dominance over peoples.

However the movers and shakers have and still do underestimate the manner of human existence and nature. Just as they considered they were bringing Gaddafi into the fold his people decided otherwise. Hence the smartly executed U turn by the newly formed military EU forces carved out of the NATO rump.

A further matter not anticipated by the NWO establishment has been the rise of China as a super power. One not only with colossal military might but an even more influential strength, cash! The courting of the USSR thieves fleeing that collapse of a political union (enslavement) was easy. The cold war had gained significant capability to attract the billions of dollars filched by that shady political elite. So garnering that immense wealth for the benefit of "the cause" was not difficult. Indeed planned for.

All of these years unfolding, with a significant push towards a single world governing elite, was still rushed and done in haste in recent years. Patience was wearing thin and The EU construct was painfully slow. Hence the euro introduction designed to expedite the single state ambition. Sadly, with all the political jockeying and absorption of the capitalist corporate global reach, into one pea soup of dogma, has meant that China has been given a free and easy ride to their current might.

Now, this very day, we see an EU begging trip to Beijing. How humiliating to be told this, " The chief of the European Union bailout fund is holding talks with Chinese officials on China’s possible involvement in saving the euro. Klaus Regling also hinted that his fund could become part of a joint vehicle with the IMF. ", taken from this article. The Chinese will demand a "lay off" the human rights mantra" in return, though

Note the bold print. A neat trick to drag a global fund into the EU remit. A fund once meant to further developing countries in most need but long since "taken over" by the Bilderberger interests.

So we see immediately that our concerns for the welfare of our species is now a ready currency for the political architects of a future too horrific to contemplate. How ironic we have come to this, after a World War fought to protect our freedoms and humanity. In our modern world the ends really do justify the means. That despite the abject failure of this greed for power, beloved of the few, enjoyed by the few but hell on earth for the many!

Nevertheless, we have seen an Arab Spring. Imagine what a Chinese Summer might produce!

Unoccupied Territory: The rage of Caliban

2011-10-19T07:51:00.001+01:00

In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, the unnamed island which hosts the dramatic action is ruled over by Prospero, a benign despot modeled on those Renaissance thinkers who were part magician, part philosopher and part alchemist. Prospero’s two servants are very different creatures. Ariel is angelic, a pure and marvelous spirit devoted to Prospero. Caliban, by contrast, is an ignorant, lumbering brute who resents the debt he owes to Prospero, who released him from a tree in which he had been imprisoned by his previous mistress, the witch Sycorax. Caliban flies into a rage when he sees his misshapen reflection in a mirror. Ariel and Caliban, for those interested in symbolism and allegory, can easily be made to fit the pattern of man’s dualistic nature. It would have been a tradition familiar to the Bard, although we no longer have access to it.
Despite – or perhaps owing to – the sickening amount of money lavished on this country’s dysfunctional education ‘system’, few children will ever again grow up to draw lessons from Shakespeare, or even bother to read him. We live in a country where a man called Jeremy Clarkson features on advertisements declaring that he would rather stick needles in his eyes than read Shakespeare. Thus, a man whose fame comes from genuflecting in front of motor cars steals a line from a Jack Nicholson film to tell us to turn our backs on our greatest author. Happy days. But I digress. Regarding our current spate of anti-bank demonstrations, I can’t help but see Caliban’s offspring camped out by St Paul’s Cathedral.
The expanding American Occupy movement is already showing its hidden colours. Demonstrators defecate on police cars, spit at marines and coast guards, and unfurl banners reading Solidarity with Palestine. Our homegrown UK version is, for now, more benign, a small oasis of genuine puzzlement peopled by small-time bedlamites with time on their hands and nothing more useful to do. But to pay attention to these string-pull dollies is instructive.
Listening to the inchoate, free-associative nonsense coming from those interviewed during the Occupy the Stock Exchange jamboree, I detect self-loathing and impotent rage, as the raggle-taggle band of British metropolitan indignados struggle to come to terms with their failure to grasp their own complicity in what has happened to the British economy. Thus, as yesterday’s London Evening Standard pointed out, they do not see the inherent contradictions in tweeting their quarter-baked economic pronouncements on machines made by the very corporations they want so much to despise, or wearing masks from the film V for Vendetta, made by one of America’s top 100 companies. The expensive training shoes so many of them will be wearing are the signs of their membership of the financial freemasonry they think they hate.
The problem with raging against the banks and corporations is that they paid your train fare to the demonstration. Attacking bankers – and that may become as literal as it is now metaphorical – makes as much sense as angrily shaking the fence of a vineyard, furious with the vigneron for getting drunk. The banks are no more to blame for the crisis in the money system than the enterprising eastern European arriviste can be blamed for unregulated immigration. Mankind is damned to grasp what it thinks will lead to self-betterment if is placed within easy reach. This is the psychology of looter and banker alike.
But when you behold a political class who have taken it on themselves to regulate, organise and micro-manage every aspect of the lives of those people it is supposed simply to serve, and yet failed to regulate the one small section of the population who can really burn down the house, and you go on to fail to make that class the target of your ire, you are only showing your brute ignorance. You are Caliban before the mirror.
Apparently, the most coherent and best-received speech given at yesterday’s idiot’s agora was that of an accountant, himself sick of the escalating spiral of greed he saw among the new elites. The average CEO’s salary in 1970, he informed a puzzled carnival, was thirty times the national average. That figure is now 400. A shocking figure, but not the result of any mythical free market. Instead, the game was rigged from the start by the banker’s friend, the political gauleiter. This fiscal mine collapse was orchestrated in club and on golf course, in villa, private jet and corporate hospitality box. Orwell’s dictum that England is a family with the wrong members in control should be tattooed on the arm of every incoming Right Honourable Member as they enter the House of Commons.
The machineries of economic collapse are now well and truly reaching a higher gear. Memo to future generations; live within your means and leave the printing presses for the writers. Personally, it’s my belief that mankind, in terms of its social evolution, is barely ready for the baby bouncer, and I think this obsession with shiny things will pass, as will the addiction to the nipple of the state. But a severe illness will get worse before it gets better. I’ll let Caliban have the last word;

We shall lose our time,
And all be turned to barnacles, or to apes,
With foreheads villainous low.

Europe after the rain

2011-10-10T19:27:00.003+01:00

Now that the grand European folly is cracking along its fault lines, what will the post-European world look like? The post-American meme – possibly partly due to Mark Steyn’s latest offering [which I’ve yet to read] – is beginning to seep into mainstream consciousness, but post-Europeanism is far harder to predict. The history of the European project will read a little like a marine engineer’s report on the seaworthiness of the Titanic. Meanwhile, the world economy broods in the corner like a dyspeptic bouncer.
If the American economy does pull up lame – and Heffer in Saturday's Mail provides sobering analysis - and the USA becomes more insular and less concerned with policing the world [a demonstrably thankless task], and if Europe reverts to the differential gearing of continental nation states, there will be a void, a job vacancy. Wanted: Superpower. Immediate start. As The Stranglers once sang; Who wants the world?
The love affair between the British liberal left and the European project has always been reducible to the former’s ill-disguised hatred of America. This is partly because America is seen as Israel’s sponsor – and the British left are rabidly anti-Semitic, although they disguise this beneath a masquerade mask of anti-Zionism – and partly because America has shown that multi-ethnicity works without the attendant nonsense of multiculturalism.
Personally, I have never had a problem with conspiracy theory number 47b, the one where the Jews run the world in secret via the banks. Capitalism has pulled more people out of poverty than any other –ism [Marxism, anyone? Thought not], and if Jews have the controls, then as far as I’m concerned the bagels are on the house. To me, it’s instructive that when the Mafia wanted a banker, they didn’t promote an Italian but chose a Jew, Meyer Lansky. But the current crisis is not capitalism’s hubris, but the end result of unregulated greed.
As for ethnic mix – the bane of far-right knuckle-scrapers across Europe – it’s a demonstrably good thing. I was told by a psychology student who is now reading a PhD in behavioural genetics at the University of Colorado that the country with the purest racial heritage – and thus prime DNA for study – is Iceland. The first country to default, you will recall [although I believe the patient took its medicine and is recovering]. The noted eugenicist Adolf Hitler believed that a racially pure Germany would conquer the world. That’s all very well if you want a race of humourless, six-foot-seven, blonde bureaucrats, but America won that particular game with an ethnic melting pot that would have appalled the squinting, pinch-faced Austrian maniac. Also, anyone who harbours a belief that inbreeding Germans would provide world leadership should read the extraordinary story of Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and her Jew-hating husband.
So, no Europe and no America; Welcome to the new world disorder. The yawn-inducing leftist mantra that India and China are poised to provide the victorious historians of the future is beginning to look like a tale told by an idiot. While I would be amused to see the left’s reaction to Chinese hegemony – it is your human right to be run over by a tank – China looks increasingly like an infrastructural Ponzi scheme, while India’s economic prowess seems to revolve around its undoubted position as the world’s biggest call centre.
The appropriate word is appropriately German; Schadenfreude. The arrogance of the European gauleiters and their train-carrying MSM courtiers has been breathtaking. I think my favourite example of sheer brass neck was the attempt to make criticism of the EU tantamount to blasphemy. Where does one begin with this kind of designer totalitarianism?
The EU has not had its accounts signed off for 16 years. What company would survive this cankerous fiscal mismanagement? The EU and its proponents have attempted to graft political union onto a currency whose most attractive feature is the prettiness of its banknotes. Countries are required to keep voting in referenda until they come up with the correct, affirmative answer. Has there ever been such an anti-democratic exercise?
Possibly the most disturbing element of this whole Franco-German farce is the collusion of the media, particularly our own version of Pravda, the BBC. The provisional wing of the EU, the European media have never flagged in their sponsorship of this grande guignol stupidity. Only independent bloggers – unpaid and derecognised by the MSM – have spoken out against Europe. Richard North and Christopher Booker were telling the world in 2003 that Europe would end as a busted flush. No one in the MSM listened. If these gentlemen have any horse racing tips, I’m listening.
Memo to Barroso, Sarkozy, Merkel and all the other Euro fanatics. The people of Europe – the real people, not your vain and self-regarding set – neither want nor need your mildly fascist gentleman’s club. Leave us alone. We can trade with one another, visit and enjoy one another’s countries and traditions, exist as countries with our own sovereign right to exist, and probably produce accounts which would not interest the police.
I’m no little Englander. I’ve always sought to avoid those saloon-bar bores who twine on about their own country in much the same way as I’d eschew the company of those parents who speak with love in their eyes of their brattish, snivelling, witless children. Obsessive nationalists belong on the intellectual terraces. But better a modest northern trading nation – if we still have the ability to trade – then a building block in a grey European council estate. It’s always been axiomatic to me that the whole point of corrosive EU laws has been to hobble Britain to the point that we have to beg for permission to join the European folly.
The game has changed. Whether you consider yourself a creature of the political left or of the right is now about as relevant as whether you consider yourself to be a Platonist or an Aristotelean. It is now ‘about’ [as the politicians love to say] the political class and their MSM catamites, and the rest of us. To paraphrase Engels, the EU, thankfully, should be placed in "the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe".

Bailouts Abound.

2011-10-06T15:38:00.002+01:00

As The EU Follows Its Best And Most Practised Habits.

The EU bureaucrats continue their blind adherence to the picture above. Ably followed by The UK's pathetic panic merchants and their beloved printing presses. Not one Government has the nuance to realise that The EU project and The UK's passionate support of all they do, just is not working.

The breakup of this wreck and the return to competitive trade, including currencies, plus sensible interest rates, to allow banks to earn more from savers and at the same time reward those same prudent individuals, is the way forward.

The EU is a gigantic drain on the resources of every member state, rich or poor. 100% of all its activity is replicated in every Country's ruling bodies. Unlike The EU monolith, smaller, localised regimes can act swiftly, in response to local problems. They are also more able to root out corruption where found.

This latter capability appears beyond the arrogance of Brussels. Of course, since it is an unelected regime, indeed dictatorship, it has no fear of democracy or elective consideration. This fact is very much at the heart of the debacle surrounding us.

Even access to the sewers will only find bits of useless paper, already soiled beyond further use. The gold and precious metals were hoarded elsewhere long ago!

The Tories, (Buggin's) Turn.

2011-10-01T11:57:00.000+01:00

The Political Soap Bubble Frenzy reaches Its Bursting Point.

Was it only me who noticed the almost identical image of the bastardised Union Flag in Liverpool? It inspired my use of "Buggin's" turn, as The Not The Real Tories (NTRT) conference kicks off their chattering, useless jamboree today.

Words we won't hear will be, "Ed and me agree wholeheartedly on the complete Eurification of the UK". The fact that a soporific bunch of young and old, carefully selected, codgers will be getting themselves off that they are the present incumbents in Downing Street, will be feted as some kind of triumphalist platform for Pseudo to strut his rather limp stuff.

Choreographic input will seek to hold as much attention as Strictly Cum Dancing, without the bodily fluid inconveniences. It will all escape any incisive attention by the blathering Chatterati. Words will be spoken, speeches made, vainly hoping to resonate with the importance of Churchill's. The economic disaster engulfing us all will be likened to the actual life and death battles fought in the past, to retain sovereignty and freedom.

All will be European Union vetted. All will be spoken in the hope the orator will be adopted as a pet Commissioner on the remaining, luxury class, lifeboats, soon to leave the site of the "unsinkable" Titanic EU iceberg collision. For sink it will. The only question is when and how bad will it be?

Those two latter questions are those this Country wish addressed, discussed or at least acknowledged. Fat chance. Full steam ahead, more icebergs to hit, more people to be drowned but don't fret. We got you into this mess in order to distract you all while we quietly equip our lifeboats.

That the "delegates" will meekly sit, as the Nazis on the platform stage assure them they only need a shower to be set free of it all. They will be every bit as sheepish, supportive and stupid as the idiots at the LibDum fest and Socialist pogroms, spouted by their erstwhile peers, on the rostrums of deceit.

If you can be bothered to watch do so for the reason that this theatre is reflective of your and your childrens' lives and futures. Futures measured by which political Party has the best posters, the best scams and the best camouflage for their EU masters. The faces in the auditorium will be obedient, acquiescent and glum. Weak, pathetic and puerile as the ruling elite adopt not just a poster design but a complete surrender of our history and our future.

Frankly the blind, stupid, faithful and pathetically loyal, duped fools will not be capable of smelling the toxic gases enveloping them from behind the platform. They, we, deserve all we are getting.

You Never Know.

2011-09-14T10:42:00.000+01:00

What's Really Going On.

A favourite meme when Labour left office, telling us all rather smugly "there's no money left" was where did it all go? That question must be ever more relevant as this pathetic, political wasteland that is The EU stumbles on, despite the justifiable blows raining down.

Calling England and Muffled Vociferation are but two, my own included, of hundreds of people affected dreadfully by this arrogant folly and who do realise where the money has gone. Just listen to the ever higher pitched voice of near panic from Barroso. One of the stark reminders of the awful and power hungry idiots who are behind our deep malaise. Calling England points us to this article, from The telegraph.

The obvious and all powerful reason for the "abyss" we now stare over is the profligate Euro zone spending programmes, mostly lost to bureaucratic job creation gerrymandering, wherebye government none-jobs have been used by Countries in the belief competition for trade, goods, tourism and produce was no longer necessary.

It was a beloved tactic by Labour in the UK and mimicked throughout Europe, with the possible exception of Germany. Newly employed "jobs for life" workers went on a spending spree, borrowing from willing lenders against supposedly secure earnings. Behind all this the whispering conspiratorial politicians and bankers really believed they had created a virtuous circle.

How wrong could you be? In 2008 savers, nervous for their money began thinking it might be better under a blanket in their own care. Investors and institutions wanted guarantees that could not be met. At least so it seemed, only by tax payers and their discredited political friends.

So these whispering, secretive cabals turned to the even shadower corridors of organised crime. An activity desperate to launder vast sums of ill gotten gains. Then look what happened. That cash was squandered in exactly the identical manner as previously. Suddenly the Mafioso were nervous about there hordes of money now in the hands of governments and The Euro zone particularly.

All of this politicisation and overt criminalisation of international, globalised lunacy, where all the proper tenets of competitive but fair trade were subsumed to a political desire prepared to do anything to cling to power, has brought us to a terrible impasse. Now, however the paymasters are no longer voters but criminal gangs with possibly greater power and wealth than their political counterparts.

The permanent political class, Sarah Palin's excellent description, are now so far down the road to perdition they consider their only chance of survival is to take us all down the same path. In this they, like their criminal bosses, forget one significant fact. One unfolding in The Middle East, that eventually the worm turns. It is a very large one and it might just be moving in The Western Bloc. We can but hope. Of course if the Mafia start their Shylock like retribution to honour debt owing, that, too, might concentrate a few minds!

Who would you choose to be the character in the bed!

Desperate For Tax Revenue.

2011-09-05T13:42:00.000+01:00

From Anywhere But Government Saving.

I am at a loss to understand today's pronouncements, or any day's for that matter. Today is this gem, another hidden agenda, of course. It is one of an onslaught of decree and obfuscation to hide the mathematical constant that is Government failure over the decades following the second world war.

Remember Cameron's election prattle about how hard it would be but he had the answers? Government waste leading to punitive taxation was the problem he pledged to turn around. Nothing about runaway inflation, increased Government debt, interest repayments and 20% VAT. All of these would not be an issue. We'd all be in it together.

Nevertheless the British Public didn't want him and his fellow, "green" in philosophy and green in experience, lot in charge. Sadly we have not only The Conservative in name, not in nature, cretins sort of in charge but a scary and pathetic LibDum partnership of all the non-talents.

School and education reform blocked, green taxation under their disgraced and mega-rich spoilt brat, Huhne soaring away to a nightmare collision with reality and exponential fuel poverty. No matter, onward and upwards for the fortunate few and screw the rest of us. Build on our farmlands to assuage the appetite of development cronies and donors. Swamp our coastal waters and dark satanic mills with useless windmills. Don't ask why windmills fell out of favour for milling, chaps, old hat all that.

The list of debased and devalued policies is endless. Only one thing remains as an aforementioned constant. All these stupid ideas need ever more taxation. That appears not to be a problem. Except it actually is. Without production of goods and food to feed ourselves we have to compete with ever growing world populations and subsequent demand. Without our own in house capability for energy, (coal) and sustenance (farming) we will be very much at a disadvantage.

Add to that little means to defend ourselves from predatory interests, particularly from Europe and we have a pessimistic scenario invisible to those supposed to do anything about it. One major factor in all this? Market forces have been quietly politicised and we all know what that means.

Riots in the real world

2011-08-20T08:49:00.002+01:00

As the MSM frets and bothers in the wake of the riots, the real world outside the bubble gets on with the job of clearing up. A good friend of mine works at a 6^th-form college not far from Croydon, and has some interesting observations.

Real people and their anecdotal evidence offer three advantages over journalists. They don’t have an agenda, they aren’t getting paid for their opinions, and they tend to live in the places hit worst by social unrest because they have to not, unlike many young journalists resident in Hoxton, Brick Lane and Hackney, because it’s hip. They see things happen rather than read about them on Twitter.

My friend – we’ll call him Paul – has three main observations.

Firstly, on A-level results day, the college was suddenly buzzing with student life again after the silence of the holidays [Paul works there year round]. The students had come in to get their results. More than that, though, many of them had clearly come in to show off their new acquisitions: box-fresh trainers, jewellery, designer clothing and other shiny things. Youth violence, Paul has overheard students claiming, is now increasingly about one gang trying to access the ‘horde’ of a rival gang.

Secondly, and also concerning gangs, is the revelation which disgusted me most. There are, at Paul’s estimation, 70 to 80 known gang members at the college. The teaching staff, in addition to the rest of their onerous duties, have to organise an entirely unofficial rota system to ensure that students from rival gangs don’t attend the same lessons. This wearying logistical exercise is, of course, unrecognised and unpaid.

Thirdly, Paul spoke to two rather sensible, grounded girls whose stories seemed entirely plausible. They told Paul about their area on the worst night of rioting. Two hundred or so locals had come on to the streets to defend their property and businesses. At one point, some wannabe looters had appeared on bikes and made for a local shop. One of them was quite badly beaten, in full view of the police, who took the failed looter away when the local people were finished with him. None of this made even the local newspaper. Even more than copycat rioting, the establishment fears copycat vigilantism, unless it is carried out by approved ethnic groups. As I once opined to a friend concerning Islamist terrorism, the one thing government fears more than radicalised mosques is radicalised pubs.

The testament of real people, bloggers included; accept nothing less.

Rioting, Part two.

2011-08-16T11:29:00.000+01:00

As The Dust Settles For Now.

I don't wish to be the sole poster here. This contribution is inspired by Richard's link to this, knobhead. Now mincer White and his socialist luvvie mates and BBC chatterati are not people I would normally give time of day to. This piece fails to build on its partial excellence because of the rabid and slavish need to score party political points.

The only salvation we can possibly countenance is an end to adversarial politics until a future nation state becomes proven as not working with such a consensus.

Some hope. The failings of successive Governments have been continued or exacerbated. The wishes of the majority trampled under that dreadful phrase "representative democracy". How can an MP use such a term to excuse failing to bow to the majority wish. One when votes are cast in the belief that a manifesto promise is what they can expect. Neither side of this unholy Cobbleition has stuck to its beliefs. As for Pseudo Cameron, his emperor's clothes were well and truly revealed by the youngster quoted by White, "He's a knob head"! Such is the power of some of this article he almost had me admiring Coke'Ed. Until, that is, I quickly remembered that little mongrel's obedience to his previous, proven madman, of a leader.

None of these morons get it. Their part in all this debt creation, broken society, illegal wars and all the other tired, "not me Guv" cliches, is just not on their radar.

Human beings are really made up of differing qualities, abilities and DNA. Some are down right nasty, others lost in a sea of poverty and deprivation, decades of socialism have failed to improve. The loss of manual, unskilled work and outlets for the less able, is a disgrace. Add to that the importation of hordes of immigrants, unable to contribute anything but a colossal burden of sheer volume, to a small group of Islands. The bleeding obvious is phenomenal in its disregardful neglect of mention by the politicians.

If all this were not enough of a failure, we continue blindly down this enforced route to Federalism. As if our own trials and tribulations, political arses and enormous debt were not enough, we blithely volunteer to increase exponentially the very causes of our difficulties. Too much immigration, little output or economic strength. Social ghettos of disillusionment, disenfranchised, disregarded, disaffected, peoples. All the time these individuals are bombarded with Sunday Times Style magazines, celebrity excess and luxury images only a minuscule can ever attain. Ironically those selling the perfect Utopia of self indulgent excess, which so demeans its client base, gets to live those dreams on the back of the window licking populations they exploit.

When I look at what's to be done, I am drawn to my personal, many years old, despair, that only violent overthrow of this madness can work.

The soul searching by the haves, hasn't a clue what it is like to be a have not. I did, as a child. The old Labour/Union people did much to improve the lot of this Nation until they, too, were seduced by the glamour and celebrity of money and power.

So here we are. An Oldrightie peering to the left and seeing just a small gap before the face of the fascist ghosts of Europe are visible. Moving my head slowly right to seek the commonsense that used to epitomise that direction, I see a weak, enfeebled man. One desperately trying to be all things to all men in public, whilst plotting the very downfall of a once proud people. Heir to Blair, Grandson of Heath. It's enough to make you so angry you want to break something.

Amid the criminality of last weeks riots were genuinely angry, frustrated people. The response? More draconian policing, further blatant destruction of freedom and a faster march to that jackboot Utopia seen as a Federal Europe. Obama is licking his lips at the very thought of a Pan European supporter of his enslaved Nation. Ironic how a descendant of slavery sees little problem with that of a whole Continent and slavishly promotes not just the politics of fear but the very exercise of that nightmare. A plague on all their houses.

Rioting.

2011-08-08T11:48:00.000+01:00

I Do This At My Place.

Rail helplessly at the state of our Nation and the decline and fall of once proud peoples. Men and women whose parents freed the world of tyranny and Nazi atrocity forced into a straight jacket of disenfranchised helplessness. Ever since the second world war socialism has held sway and brought us to the mess we are in. Mass immigration, colossal bureaucracy and a dumbing down of educational standards and aspiration.

Let's not be gentle about what we are seeing. An economic crash for the second time in three years has brought nothing but more of the same from a political class incapable of self criticism.

Let them suffer the wrath and terror their constituents are having to endure throughout Europe and soon, America. Some hope, of course, that they will. When wondering where the police are deployed in London, look no further than the Greek tactics. Government buildings and wealthy areas were carefully targeted for protection and the deprived, gangster ridden ghettos allowed to burn. Ring any bells? Political change is coming but it will be a great deal more painful to us all than we have yet seen. Their fall back options, to protect themselves from our wrath and indignation, will be well in hand. They probably knew, or should have, that the creation of an imported underclass and tolerance of a gang culture, stretching from Eastern Europe to South America, might bring about what we see in London. One thing is for sure, they keep themselves well away from it.

Annual Eton Sports Day.

2011-08-06T13:32:00.000+01:00

Always held In Exotic Locations.

As sad as this match turned, out my sympathies lie as much with the unnecessary loss of a precious creature as with the more readily found human volunteer. I suppose the polar bear 1, Etonian 0 half time score would always end in a draw as the bear was gunned down leaving quite possibly a wife and cubs.

This "holiday" expedition was an expensive and somewhat elite journey, more because they could than they should. That it was in the guise of the very questionable climate change obsessives' agenda makes it even more ironic.

Richard blogged on this at his place of reason. and I suspect with a similar sense of mild irritation at the futility of it all. The holiday trade is awash with Eco-tourism to all manner of places we do not belong, with our prurient and selfish need for experiences. "Where's James, today?", asks a guest at some posh garden party, "Oh," replies the host, "He's on an Arctic expedition to determine the decline of the polar bear population in the Arctic, you know? He's passionate about protecting them". He'd have been better donating £10,000 to the protection league for endangered polar bears.

Right On.

2011-08-01T11:42:00.000+01:00

Or Maybe Not?

"Ramadan is a time of intense devotion and reflection. Its importance is emphasised in prayer and as a time when families and friends gather to remember those less fortunate. Its values remind us of the principles that we hold in common - tolerance, justice, progress and the dignity of all human beings. The key messages of selflessness, charity, and compassion are values that unite Muslims and non Muslims alike.”" - The Nation

When Somebody Tries.

2011-07-29T11:01:00.000+01:00

"They Have Friends".

I had/have a degree of personal involvement two or so years back in this MPs Association. What was awful was to witness a marvellous constituency turned into a toy by a man devoid of decency. I regarded the author of the link a touch cranky only to subsequently discover he was the lad who cried "The Emperor has no clothes". Check out the link and weep for the loss of freedom and accountability. This ought to go viral in its implications.A real opportunity to justifiably have a good hard metaphorical slap of a guy who's sole claim to fame is he is a favoured old school chum of Pseudo Dave. Not nice, I'm sad to say, these people. Typical, of course, of The EU cabal.

Norway. The country with dignity.

2011-07-23T20:48:00.000+01:00

Last Night’s speech by the Prime Minister of Norway.

Today Norway was hit by two shocking and bloody and cowardly attacks.
We still do not know who attacked us; much is still uncertain.
But we know that many are dead and injured.
We are all shocked at the evil that has struck us so brutally and so suddenly
This night demands much of all of us.
And the days that follow will demand even more
We are prepared to face up to this.
Norway hangs together during critical times.
We mourn our dead, we suffer with the injured, and we comfort relatives.
This is about attacks on innocent civilians, on young people at summer camp.
An attack on all of us.
I have a message to the people who attacked us, and those behind them.
This is a message from all of Norway:
You will not destroy us.
You will not destroy our democracy nor our quest for a better world.
We are a small nation, but we are a proud nation.
No one shall bomb us into silence or shoot us into silence.
Nothing will frighten us out of being Norway.
This night we will comfort each other, talk with each other, and stand together.
Tomorrow we will show the world that Norway’s democracy grows stronger when it is challenged.
We shall find the guilty and hold them responsible.
The important thing tonight is to save lives, to care for the victims and their loved ones
I would like to state my recognition for the work of the police, the medics,
and all the other people who currently do such formidable work
to help others, healing injures and saving lives.
We must never cease to stand up for our values.
We have to show that our open society can pass this test, too,
And that the answer to violence is even more democracy,
even more humanity, but never naïveté.
That is what we owe to the victims and to the those they hold dear.

A sensible and pragmatic speech.
In this country of ours, we would most likely have our Prime Minister telling us that “Lessons will be learnt”, and bombing us a raft of further oppressive legislation.

My sympathies in this most troubling time.

As Ever.

2011-07-22T12:35:00.000+01:00

The Gathering Storm.

I doubt he'll put his hand up when it matters!

Dodgy Dave really is heir to Bliar, just not as good at disguising his fibbing. Was he warned over Coulson, "I gave him a second chance". Did you discuss the BSkyB deal with NI. "My talks were not inappropriate. ". My own blog has discussed this blatant "liasm" pervading all our institutions. From The BBC to Gus O'Donnell and the Mandarin classes, truth is something to be traded for personal aggrandaisment and cash. Now I've no time for Tom Watson and his biased crusade. His party never read scripture or are too thick to understand "execution by stoning". Yet the mantle inherited by the Cobbleition and the passionate need for the chatterati to sup with very short spoons is still looking very dangerous dinner partying for Pseudo. If dodgy friends and even worse dodgy dossier manipulations are desired, to secure the legacy of Bliar and Brown, Cameron is well on course to be the truest inheritor of a very nasty Government. Greek yoghurts all round?

Here's A Thought.

2011-07-18T11:26:00.000+01:00

Hacking Into Corruption.

How about a twelve month moratorium on civil service information wherebye any employee can produce any knowledge they hold under the official secrets act, pertaining to Government and Parliamentary corruption or malpractice? Include EU discussions for a federal completion, bankers rescue practices et al. That might be jolly and very informative. Alternatively, release MI5s dossiers on our MPs and their behaviour and scrub the hundred year lock on Dunblane. Now what was that song from John Lennon? Oh, yes, "Imagine". Part of that wish list is due in 2066, apparently. What it was like to be a Native North American!

The Surprising Inevitability.

2011-07-16T17:15:00.000+01:00

Lost In Microwaves.

cartoon borrowed from here.

The sense of hope and relief, at the defeat of Snotty's abject failure and Labours' profligate economic paucity of competence, so quickly gone. The cycling reference I find very apt. A Cobbleition, bringing together two ostensibly OK Toffs seemed such a good idea and what the Public voted for. Yet how quickly the doubters have been proved correct. The first glimmer of a vain but consequential new and once more unelected PM was his car document and wardrobe carrying motorcade behind the pink lefty, red jacketed buffoon.

Even so it seemed set fair for a full term with the new head Boys in charge. OK, both have a dubious record as individuals. Both never held a decent job and Cleggy steeped in the largesse given to the chosen few of The EU Nazis still seemed refreshing up against the stained nappy wearing, nose picker, forebear of this now discredited office of Government. However the News International scandals swirling about ought now to see Cameron go before Cleggy. Who'd have thought that.

We need something cataclysmic to let Cameron take his fellow cycling travellers over the cliff, without us all being dragged over with them. Perhaps a great flood sweeping London into the sea would do it. Make sure every MP and sycophantic prat is in situ first, though. That would include most if not all of The MSM and The BBC and every member of the three useless parties. Time Cameron got on his bike in many a sense.

Connections

2011-07-15T13:30:00.006+01:00

Time Traveller blogs at Adventures in Time Travel

A Blessed Relief.

2011-07-15T13:16:00.000+01:00

BBC Journalists (auto cue readers in the main) Strike!

What a joy to not have the likes of this pair of smug, giggling, self-satisfied, spoilt and superior kids despoiling the news. Sober, unbiased delivery of facts today. No constant repetition by studio to outside broadcasters and back. "The loss of common sense is a dreadful thing. Jim, our specialist dumbo is outside Number ten. Jim, is the loss of common sense a dreadful thing?" "Why, yes Fiona. Even Downing Street agree and so do I. Back to you, Fiona in the studio." "There you have it. The BBC and therefore you suckers out there now all agree because our bias is all that matters!".

Why not get rid of them all? Save on mega wages and no more massive, tax payer funded pensions. Simples!

A Biblical Waste.

2011-07-13T15:33:00.000+01:00

Hardly Seven Fishes, Is It?

As our drug addled EU masters pontificate at the failure of yet another pathetic policy, dating back to 1983, famine engulfs Africa and EU fish eating populations go short. All in the name of preserving stocks. A policy warned against from day one is now depleting further an already ravaged marine supply. Now this Damascan moment has been realised, guess what? It will take years to reverse, millions of euros to have endless meetings, dubious debates and a self-interest modification to protect those who have made great profits at others' expense. "There will be hard bargaining by the European Parliament and EU member states' governments before the new policy is adopted." Note the BBC euphimism "revamped"!

Then back in 2007!

I also doubt that factory ships throw anything back. Mulch it all up into fish fingers and who's the wiser?

Imagine how many tonnes this would have to dump!

Squeaky voices

2011-07-09T08:15:00.000+01:00

If we were so minded, we could take The Independent headline and its story and rewrite them, better to reflect the reality. Rather than say that a question mark now hangs over Cameron's judgement, however, we would have to resort to the use of rather more words. Thus might we say:

After years of stumbling around in the dark, ignoring the self-evident and blindingly obvious fact that Cameron's judgement is and always has been suspect over a very wide range of issues, we have at last discovered that he is a seriously flawed man and have decided to present our discovery to you in the guise of "news", thereby assuming that you are so thick that you hadn't already noticed and that you need to pay us clever people to tell you.

Now, we admit that this does not have quite the same immediacy and striking power as a Sun headline. But then we am not clever like wot these professional journalists are, who are at the centre of things and know what's really going down.

On the other hand, we could say that the Fourth Estate, in now reporting that which most of the nation already knew, is having to deal the embarrassment of playing catch-up. And this is the best they can do.

What must be terrifying these little dears, though, is the parallel discovery that so many people had come to their conclusions unaided, without the mighty MSM to guide them. The brighter ones may even be putting two and two together, realising that most people don't actually need their clever commentary in order to know what to think.

Even then, old habits die hard. Still, they chase after that single, elusive thing that they all strive after: setting the agenda. That, they think, is where their power lies – not as yet realising that the world has changed forever. They have lost their monopoly control of information, and are just squeaky voices, competing for a hearing in the growing cacophony.

If Honour Existed.

2011-07-08T14:36:00.001+01:00

This Would Happen Later Today.

David Cameron.

"The events that have unfolded in the past few weeks, culminating in the closure of The News of The World and the arrest of its former editor and my initial appointment as Press Secretary, Andrew Coulson, I make the following statement:

It is apparent that this action, in appointing such an individual to the heart of British Politics, was a grave error of judgement. This mistake has led me to realise that my own fitness for office is now questionable. Not least by myself. I therefore, with immediate effect intend to step down as Prime Minister, after taking the necessary steps to call an immediate General Election. I shall also urge my Party to not contest that election and call upon The Labour and Liberal Democrats to do the same. My reasons for such actions are that all three parties have allowed our political system to fall into a morass of immoral, corrupt and secretive deals in all areas of Government and that this can no longer be allowed to continue. Thank you."

Jedward Miliband.

"In light of The Prime Minister's statement I am duly bound to reply. On behalf of The Labour party I can categorically state that the behaviour of Alistair Campbell, whilst holding the post of Press Secretary to Tony Blair, was far cleverer, more devious and successful in not getting caught out, than Coulson. I therefore divorce myself from all previous dealings, over circa 18 years that my party had with News International.

The lavish parties, yachts and private jets, employed on our behalf by Rupert Murdoch, were all for the well being and good of The Labour movement. Our economic legacy proves how little influence they had on our great period in office. To this end I shall resist the call by Mr Cameron not to contest the forthcoming election. Indeed I can state at this press conference that any manifesto pledges and guarantees not to drive The Nation even deeper into debt, will be reneged upon, as soon as we enter Office once more, in order to continue the traditions of sleaze and corruption for which all British political parties are rightly famous. Thank you."

Nicklearse Clegg.

"It is my duty to respond to the statements of my right dishonourable dear friends, The Prime Minister and the leader Of The Labour Party. This moment is a tipping point in the politics of this once great country now brought to its knees by the years of corrupt and corrosive relationships of the other two parties. Whilst their underhand and despicable governance has led us to the brink of destruction, my party, under my leadership, has kept the only hope of salvation we have alive.

My confidential and secret meetings with our great European State has kept the door open to sacrifice our future for the good of the moral, upright and totally incorruptible Federal European States. I am therefore able to announce my party will fight the next election funded wholly by the European Commission.

Subject to the inevitable victory, if not at the first time of asking then at the re-run, in which the financial burden will no longer permit any opposition , I will immediately close Parliament and subsume all future governance to The EUSSR. I am guaranteed that this State Of Liberata will have the extreme honour of providing the very first ever President of The EUSSR unified in the dream of a 1984 Utopian existence. Thank you."

Already?

2011-07-07T11:36:00.005+01:00

It's Only July The Seventh.

Forget financial meltdown, political storms and violent protests. Forget job losses, bankruptcies, heartache and suffering. Already the main topic of conversation and real interest throughout the corridors of power, is the great August EU shut down. Regardless of any consequences, the real head honchos hand over the reins to the dogs body wannabees.

The truly mighty fuck off for many weeks of indulgence. Fully stuffed with their ill gotten gains, squeezed from suckers like us. The luxury yacht crews are busy readying for the orgies of indulgence, the private jets are polished and fuelled and the invitations to the pleasure domes already embossed in gold for their missive welcomes.

A new haven for a quiet raping of a compliant and desperately grateful, less surly servitude, is up and running. Corfu confined to the blazing inferno of the Greek meltdown. Since money is no object we have built a new and ever more exclusive pleasure palace and marina. Welcome all those corrupt enough to visit.

In on the beginning of this creation was Kiddyfiddler and his mates, in 2008. How it's done in that world. Just three years later we have a summary of this post. and a picture for you to slaver over.

Would I wish to or would I indulge in all of this. I can honestly say no. Such gatherings should be to celebrate a stable, decent world. Contrast it with the drought in Africa and ask if this wealth could make a difference? I suspect it could in the right hands. Such hands no longer exist, it would seem.

A Difficult Definition

2011-07-06T09:36:00.002+01:00

What's the definition of an independent blogger? I find it difficult to define. From the Free Dictionary:

1. Not governed by a foreign power; self-governing.

2. Free from the influence, guidance, or control of another or others; self-reliant: an independent mind.

3. Not determined or influenced by someone or something else; not contingent: a decision independent of the outcome of the study.

4. often Independent Affiliated with or loyal to no one political party or organization.

5. Not dependent on or affiliated with a larger or controlling entity: an independent food store; an independent film.

a. Not relying on others for support, care, or funds; self-supporting.

b. Providing or being sufficient income to enable one to live without working:

The vision I have is a blogger similar to myself - a member of no political party and completely self-reliant. But in truth I'm not, because I have the background support of the delightful gentleman OldRightie, who has been my guardian angel since a distressing episode some time ago. Both of us are of an independent mind yet it is possible OR could be member of a political party. Does that make him less independent than me? I think not.

In the past year or so group blogs have popped up all over the place, some having a few regular contributers and others having regular posts by a multitude of authors. Few have profiles of their authors. Are they independent? It's certainly much easier to keep a reasonably high profile in the blogosphere if you have a pool of authors but it raises the question of whether it's the blog or the blogger(s) who are independent.

Some bloggers are professional journalists/writers. Are they independent when they write on a personal blog?

Like most bloggers I have my regular reading list and I have only two standard rules. If a blog doesn't have a visible contact email address I don't read it. Not that I intend to bombard fellow bloggers with emails, but a contact address shows me that the writer is open to his/her readership.

Another rule is I no longer comment on blogs which do not interact with their readership. Why spend time writing a comment in response to what is a thoughtful post only to wonder if it was even read. When I began it was my decision to acknowledge every commenter at my place. Little did I realise how time consuming that would be, even for a small blog, but it's the very least I can do to acknowledge the time my reader has spent composing their comment and I consider it common courtesy.

That apart, are those independent bloggers truly independent? I suggest not because we partly rely upon each other to provide links to posts which have relevance to their own. However that doesn't affect each and every one of us having a truly independent mind does it?

Media Frenzy.

2011-07-05T06:52:00.000+01:00

A Terrific Diversion I Suspect.

Of course the Milly story is ghastly but just a minute. Our Nation is labelled thus. So here we go again, war, spying on people, police brutality and all the unsavoury machinery of State control, good. A newspaper mimics this behaviour and whoooah, dreadful, terrible, awful. Whatever we think of this latest scandal, watch it used to increase and create yet more draconian legislation. No doubt cheered on by our puppet masters in The EU. Also makes for "a good day to bury bad news" scenario.

George Orwell was naive when he wrote "1984", the 2011 reality is looking even worse. As for "Animal farm", we are all slowly becoming no more than pig swill!

This is what happens when you give the job to amateurs

2011-07-04T17:27:00.002+01:00

Lovely Louise Gray over at the Telegraph is doing her bit for recycling again.

We keep sending more and more of our recycling to landfill, apparently. According to her pals over at DEFRA, it's gone up by 50,000 tons in two years: everybody involved somehow contrives to keep the total recycling figure a secret from we readers - to hide an inconvenient fact such as a drop in the percentage being sent to landfill perhaps?

Of course, it's all our fault.

"Environmental groups have blamed councils for failing to educate households about which materials to put in the recycling bin.."

= We're thick.

"Recycling has to be dumped if it is "contaminated" with the wrong material, for example smashed glass put in alongside newspapers.."

= We're thick

"Mal Williams, of the Campaign for Real Recycling, blamed the system where councils collect different streams, like paper, plastic and cardboard in one bag".

= We need to separate rubbish more and we need more bins.

"Up to 10 per cent of the material has to be dumped because it is mixed with the wrong materials, such as bottle tops and food waste".

= We're thick.

"Julian Kirby, a campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said that councils must make sure the material collected for recycling is processed correctly rather than dumped or burned".

= We're thick and so are our councils.

"It's not just how much recycling we do that's important, it's also how we do it," he said. Gary Porter, the chairman of the Local Government Association Environment Board.."

= I'm paid a great deal of money to state the bleedin' obvious.

"The vast majority of people do the right thing, which is great. But the slight increase in contamination rates demonstrates why it is important for councils to be able to identify and work with people who misunderstand or make mistakes when sorting their rubbish."

= We're thick - but some of us are thicker than others and will need to be sent to special re-education camps.

The real answer is to stop producing crap for which there is no purpose other than to be thrown away. Time Traveller Boy II went to the shop today to buy a product from the world's richest 'concerned environmentalist'. The product was a number which could have been printed on his sales receipt.

Instead, as you'll see from the picture above, it came printed on a card, laid into a dvd-sized tray of indeterminate material, in a cardboard sleeve...

At least TTBoyII had the good sense to decline a bag to put it in.

Time Traveller blogs at Adventures in Time Travel

Doing the honest thing

2011-06-29T08:43:00.002+01:00

A splendidly indignant Peter Hitchens is fulminating about "Dave" doing the talking (telling the military to shut up and do the fighting), while the war dead from Afghanistan are to be sneaked out of the back gate of RAF Brize Norton when it takes over from Lyneham (a few weeks from now) as the arrival point for the fallen.

They will then be routed down side roads to avoid nearby Carterton – a town almost exactly the same size as Wootton Bassett – and make their way to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford along A-roads and bypasses. There'll be a small guard of honour near the hospital entrance (there already is) but somehow or other the cortege won't go down any High Streets, thus avoiding what has become a media circus.

All of this, however, has to be viewed in the context of the complete and utter failure of the Afghanistan campaign, typified by the experience of the Kajaki power project in Afghanistan, as narrated by the BBC's Mark Urban on yesterday's Newsnight, and repeated today in a BBC documentary.

He refers to a series of the heroic adventures, starting in 2007 and culminating in August 2008 with thousands of British troops taking part in an operation to escort a 200-ton turbine to the Kajaki Dam on the Helmand River, 100 miles north-west of Kandahar City.

The aim was to improve the hydro-electric scheme there, adding a turbine to the two already installed. This was part of a project that has so far cost more than £29 million, and was (and still is) regarded as an essential part of the hearts and minds campaign in the region.

But, three years after so much blood and treasure has been expended (albeit with the bulk of the cash being shelled out by the Americans), the third turbine lies unassembled – the parts littered about the weed-strewn site, exactly where they were left by the British military.

What makes this so desperately sad is that even the slightest knowledge of the history of the area would confirm that the project was never going to achieve its desired aim, even if it had been technically successful.

Not least of the problems was – as Booker recorded in September 2009 that the power lines and sub-stations which feed the electricity to several towns are controlled by the Taliban, who charge money to customers for allowing the juice to reach them.

So obvious, in fact, were the defects of the scheme that a year before, in September 2008, The Guardian, while acknowledging the "brilliant courage and ingenuity" of the British, dismissed it as a "glorious but dangerous folly".

The Kajaki, it said, has been a 90-metre-high, rock-filled demonstration of foreign good intentions for decades but has never delivered the promised benefits to Afghanistan - a political showpiece and always has been since it was built (but not fully completed) in the 1950s by the US to compete with Soviet projects elsewhere in the country.

Such was the delusional attachment to the scheme, however, that this brought a pained rebuttal from then defence secretary Des Browne. The project was not merely a symbol, he declared. "If it were only that, we would never have sent our people on such a risky mission".

Sense and analytical judgement, however, had been submerged in tales of derring-do, marking the self-declared "successful mission". Typical of the period, we got Lieutenant Colonel Rufus McNeil, Comanding Officer 13 Air Assault Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps, declaring of those that had run the hazardous convoy, "Every one of the soldiers did fantastically well."

Well, indeed they did, but it was still a complete waste of time, money, effort – and lives. By December 2009, The Guardian was back on the case with a report headed: "Taliban stalls key hydroelectric turbine project in Afghanistan". The strap read: "Convoy diverted British troops from front but generator may never be used".

The enormous hydroelectric turbine dragged at huge cost by British troops through Taliban heartlands last year, said the paper, may never be installed because NATO has been unable to secure a 30-mile stretch of road leading to an isolated dam in northern Helmand.

To install the turbine needed, amongst other things, 900 tons of cement for new foundations, but security had deteriorated to such an extent that British troops were having to be resupplied by air drop and helicopters. Even the BBC reported the problems.

Now, with additional US troops in the region – but for a short time only – USAid, which is managing the project, remains convinced that the project is worthwhile. US aid officials are now claiming that turbine could be installed in 24 to 30 months.

This is so much moonshine. No more now than in 2003 when then current project was first mooted, is this a feasible project. It remains, as always, a testament to the vain, unrealisable hopes of the coalition forces that they can bring peace and stability to Afghanistan.

Returning to Hitchens and his indignation, one recalls an episode during the London Blitz in 1940, when a cash-strapped council in the East End, finding rather fewer houses on its patch requiring collections, redeployed some of its dustcarts – cleaned out and painted a tasteful black – as hearses to collect the war dead.

Given the quite obvious disdain in which Dave holds the military, and the utter futility of the war in Afghanistan, where lives are being thrown away for absolutely no purpose – to say nothing of our hard-earned cash – he might consider following the example of the East End council.

Thus, for as long as Dave and his cronies continue to throw away lives for no purpose, he might as well do the honest thing and hire in a dustcart, instead of wasting money on expensive hearses that the public now will not be seeing. The symbolism would be entirely appropriate and serve merely to underline what our masters are doing with our money and soldiers' lives out in Afghanistan.

Fairy stories

2011-06-28T23:50:00.007+01:00

Not long before Independent Political Bloggers came into being, I posted a piece about Johann Hari's desperate climate journalism at my own blog. If you've not read Hari, you'll need to know that by comparison, George Monbiot is a paragon of measured journalism and climate sanity.

Hari's pronouncements on climate have always been inane to the point of ridicule and like Al Gore, Charlie Windsor and Chris Huhne, he wasted no effort or jet fuel in visiting the Arctic, the Maldives and Tuvalu to tell us - without a hint of self-knowledge or irony - that jetting off to far-off lands for our pathetic, self-indulgent holidays was destroying Mother Earth.

His articles could have been written by the gullible wee work-experience lass interning at Greenpeace that particular week. In view of the information that came out of yesterday's Twitterstorm, perhaps they were.

And given his capacity for fiction and imagination, perhaps he never went to those places whose climate miseries he described so eloquently? His source material could well have come from the PR machines at the WWF, FoE and Greenpeace - and, as Dan Hannan has recently reported, Greenpeace are liars.

Private Eye accused Hari of placing fictional content into factual pieces as long ago as 2003: it looks as though little has changed since then.

In the circumstances, it would be interesting to know which qualities have so impressed the Independent and the BBC since Hari was a mere 23 and whether they are the same qualities that have resulted in him being voted one of the twenty most influential gay people in the world.

We can only hope (but not too hard) that he hasn't embarrassed all those literary prize-givers whom he has fooled into showering him with glory over his illustrious career.

Time Traveller blogs at Adventures in Time Travel.

A Speech From An Accomplished Derrière.

2011-06-27T11:48:00.001+01:00

Is There A More Significant Ar*e On The Planet Or In The EU Bubble?

This despicable and ghastly, vain, self-loving kiddy fiddler is trotted out today to tell us all about the Utopia he and his ilk have been building for us for decades. The reality of the Dante vision of hell it is for us little people is just not a factor. Great wealth, fame and power to he and his fellow deviants is all he knows. The calamatious nightmare this pretend socialist and his fellow, cunning, political bubble dwellers have created is just not visible to these snobs. Individuals whose arrogance and stupidity is as invisible to them as we, in their minds, sewer rats, are.

Here is a Eurocrat for whom his privileged and nepotistic life is no more than he deserves yet condemns those less fortunate to the yoke of slavery The EU federal dream is really about. Piano wire is wasted on these standard bearers but this short video ought to be compulsive viewing for all those who crave power and wealth at the expense of others.

Ever Stopped To Wonder............

2011-06-23T12:02:00.000+01:00

Why American Leaders Adore An EU Federal State?

One might suggest that since the genocidal occupation of North America, (a debate discussed in this essay, with a dab of whitewash, naturally), The American passion to get in touch with their roots involves also creating a similar pattern to their own historic settlement. However the open savage conflict and racial hatred engendered back then is quietly hidden under the rocks and stones inhabited by the despots seeking this creation of an Americanised Europe.

There is also an even greater problem for these Bilderbergers. Communication and dissent. The latter from the powerful but in the past downtrodden nations such as China and to a degree Russia. The fraudulent practices of the West and its most, at one time, powerful leader, was done via such criminal corruption and deceit over its own people, let alone the world, that today's failings were inevitable. It is ironic that Afghanistan was the forerunner of Russian freedom from their USSR dictatorship but may be the destruction of The West's construct. That will and is, of course the direction The EU juggernaut is headed. That gigantic cliff of debt is as big as The Grand Canyon and our brakes are very much shot. Thank you all involved for the most spectacular cliff hangar for centuries!

Disappointment Assuaged.......

2011-06-19T15:00:00.001+01:00

By The Red Faced Fear Mongers.

I must say I would rather like a few warmer, sunnier days than we are having here in Blighty! However we are not alone as, you might see in the clip above, from early June in California. I do feel a degree (pun alert) better, to be able to stick two fingers up at the pedlars of doom we are supposed to worship and be terrified by, into paying ever greater energy prices taxes. Browse my favourite site for a taste of why your painful costs are so stupid. Don't take my word for it. The truth is out there. Just don't ask the Elite tax collectors and beneficiaries of our money, such as this prat and Bilderberger.

A threat to our security

2011-06-19T10:59:00.003+01:00

If Carlsberg did a defence blog, this would be it ... currently narrating the latest in the tale of the Nimrod MR4, and how the slow, greasy Fox is lying through his rotting teeth. As one of his commenter puts it: "Here we have prima facia evidence that the biggest threat to the security of this country is our own Government and the MoD".

In my opening epigram in Ministry of Defeat, I use the apocryphal tale of the officer walking down Whitehall and asking for directions to the MoD. He knows roughly where it is, so when he hails a passer-by, he simply asks: "Which side is the Ministry of Defence on?" The reply comes: "Ours, I hope".

In the book, I remark that, in southern Iraq in 2003, that hope was not fulfilled. But it would have been surprising is it was ... or ever was. We win wars and defend our territories in spite of, and not because of, the politico-military establishment represented by the MoD.

But it is not so much that they are on the "other" side, as their own. This sub-set of the wider "establishment" is primarily on its own side ... its primary concern being Selznik's famous beast, "self maintenance". And, as the Friedmans once observed, you would be foolish to expect anything else.

But we see that reality, naked in tooth and claw when another commenter observes that, "if every word spoken about Nimrod by the government was complete horse crap, then so what?" At worst for the government, he says, this (the Nimrod debacle) would end up as a ten minute segment on Newsnight. He concludes: "The general public doesn't care, and has been largely unaware of Nimrod in any form - no electoral damage, no problem".

Therein lies our problem. The ideal constitutional settlement would comprise a system where the institutional self-maintenance needs of the government would coincide with those of its electorate. Thus, in order to survive, it would have to respond its needs. Where – as is the case – there is a divergence – the needs (and concerns) of the electorate must be ignored.

In the days to come, perhaps – whimsically, the Nimrod MR4 might become a symbol of the UK resistance movement, the one that is taking its first, faltering steps towards emergence.

It will have to join the queue though. I have in my possession a tie, embroidered on which is the silhouette of a Sunderland – another maritime surveillance aircraft (pictured). Representing the home town of the Metric Martyrs, wearing that tie is a small, subtle gesture of defiance. And that is where the road to freedom starts – one small step ...

Nice and stealthy does it..

2011-06-18T10:08:00.005+01:00

For all its implied significance, The Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill has attracted scant interest from our mainstream media, other than this article in the Guardian with its emphasis on the rights of Muslim women.

As a Private Members Bill, the proposed legislation is unlikely to see the light of day but it is probably surplus to requirements anyway: the bill's primary focus is on establishing the primacy of British law over the creeping influence of Sharia and should be dealt with in parliament by amending or revoking the legislation that enables the existence of a parallel system of law.

Having quietly permitted the EU to conquer us, it would seem that our politicians and media are conspiring to allow Islam to do the same. Don't expect the BBC or the press to tell you about the revolution. Fortunately, you can find out a little more from the American media here.

Time Traveller blogs at Adventures in Time Travel.

Adult news values

2011-06-16T00:59:00.004+01:00

Much as one loathes The Guardian, one also has to concede that it occasionally acts like a proper newspaper, displaying intelligent, adult news values. This morning is such an occasion for, as the rest of the MSM plays, it leads on the Greek crisis.

The point about Greece, of course, is that it is not a faraway country of which we know little, but a member of the European Union.

Its ruling élites are part of our supreme government and, although the UK is not a member of the single currency, we are part of the same international financial system, and responsible – through the IMF and other institutions – for maintaining the financial integrity of the nation.

Thus, when the Greek government is on the brink of collapse, its economy in tatters, with pitched battles on its streets and world stocks tumbling as EU leaders squabbled over whether and how to launch a second bailout, this is actually news – important news.

From early yesterday, when the players were just warming up, George Papandreou, the prime minister – who likes to be called a socialist – seems to have offered to dissolve his government and form a national unity coalition.

However, even in this endeavour he has so far failed, not having managed to persuade the opposition conservatives to join him. Thus, battle recommences today, with Papandreou setting out form a new government and ask for a vote of confidence.

The opposition, however, is calling for Papandreou's resignation and a renegotiation of the bailout terms with the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund as the price for its assent to a national coalition.

And all that is against the background of riot police smacking into tens of thousands of demonstrators in the capital who are protesting against the radical austerity measures being imposed in an attempt to convince the "colleagues" that they should throw more money down the drain.

What is extremely heartening to hear from The Guardian is that a "sense of siege" has descended on Brussels as the Greek drama appeared to be heading towards a denouement. The ECB warned that a Greek default could spark "contagion" across Europe, causing Greek banks to implode and inflicting major damage on the big banks in France and Germany.

"It looks like a week of chaos," said a European official in Brussels. The bailout experiment for Greece has failed. Ireland and Portugal have since also needed to be rescued from national insolvency.

"The euro area faces a very challenging situation that comes mostly from the interconnection of the sovereign debt crisis and the situation of the banking sector", the ECB says. "Greece could have a contagion effect," adds Vitor Constancio, an ECB vice-president.

The whole thing now has perhaps a month to run, before the Greek economy implodes, and the euro starts to slide inexorably into the abyss – although the parallel is perhaps more like a black hole. Once you are in the gravity field, there is no escape.

As the crisis pans out, there is not going to be a single person in Europe unaffected by it, with the distinct possibility that it precipitates a depression as bad as, or worse than the 1920-30s, triggering multiple government collapses and dangerous instability. And we all know where that led.

This, therefore, is a story that is going to run and run, and if there was a residue of adult news values in the MSM, this would be an issue, as in the day's Guardian, that would rarely be off the front pages.

What happens when Greece defaults. Here are a few things:

2011-06-15T20:56:00.001+01:00

Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent. The Greek government will nationalise every bank in Greece. The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.

To prevent Greek depositors from rioting on the streets, Argentina-2002-style (when the Argentinian president had to flee by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to evade a mob of such depositors), the Greek government will declare a curfew, perhaps even general martial law.

Greece will redenominate all its debts into "New Drachmas" or whatever it calls the new currency (this is a classic ploy of countries defaulting). The New Drachma will devalue by some 30-70 percent (probably around 50 per cent, though perhaps more), effectively defaulting on 50 percent or more of all Greek euro-denominated debts. The Irish will, within a few days, walk away from the debts of its banking system.

The Portuguese government will wait to see whether there is chaos in Greece before deciding whether to default in turn. A number of French and German banks will make sufficient losses that they no longer meet regulatory capital adequacy requirements. The European Central Bank will become insolvent, given its very high exposure to Greek government debt, and to Greek banking sector and Irish banking sector debt.

The French and German governments will meet to decide whether (a) to recapitalise the ECB, or (b) to allow the ECB to print money to restore its solvency. (Because the ECB has relatively little foreign currency-denominated exposure, it could in principle print its way out, but this is forbidden by its founding charter.

On the other hand, the EU Treaty explicitly, and in terms, forbids the form of bailouts used for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, but a little thing like their being blatantly illegal hasn't prevented that from happening, so it's not intrinsically obvious that it being illegal for the ECB to print its way out will prove much of a hurdle.)

They will recapitalise, and recapitalise their own banks, but declare an end to all bailouts. There will be carnage in the market for Spanish banking sector bonds, as bondholders anticipate imposed debt-equity swaps. This assumption will prove justified, as the Spaniards choose to over-ride the structure of current bond contracts in the Spanish banking sector, recapitalising a number of banks via debt-equity swaps.

Bondholders will take the Spanish Banking Sector to the European Court of Human Rights (and probably other courts, also), claiming violations of property rights. These cases won’t be heard for years. By the time they are finally heard, no-one will care. Attention will turn to the British banks. Then we shall see.

I just hope that they don't do this before I go on holiday.

Just saying.

Restoring the reputation of science

2011-06-13T09:42:00.007+01:00

It being another dull and wet Monday morning in my drought-ridden, globally-warmed neck of the woods (no snow here in June – that shows you just how dangerous that carbon dioxide stuff is), I thought I needed a little excitement.

Duly inspired, I donned my tin hat and ventured into Guardian territory - only to be met by the remarkable headline above. For once, I managed to read an entire Guardian article without feeling the need to hurl abuse at my monitor screen.

The climate alarmists have long lost the debate amongst free-thinking adults and the last hope for their religious cult was to greenwash our children. If this proposal comes to pass, we really could be witnessing the beginning of the end of the current and regressive anthropogenic climate change hysteria.

Which is not to say that it will not be rapidly replaced by another exercise in global panic, of course...

At my own blog over the weekend, I referred to another couple of small stories that further reinforce the suggestion of a shift in the politics of climate change. The scam - and the useful idiots promoting it - may well have run their course but it remains to be seen whether the resultant apparatus - carbon trading, feed-in tariffs for renewables, renewables obligation certificates et al - will be given up too readily. However, judging by Huhne's inane (panicked?) response to the Scottish Power announcement of a 19% increase in energy prices, the financial and political costs of the Climate Change Act may finally be registering with our dozy politicians.

Returning to the Guardian article, what made it so enjoyable, especially for we Bob Ward watchers, were these two paragraphs:

But Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, warned that Oates' ideas might not be in pupils' best interests and could make science less interesting for children.

"An emphasis on climate change in the curriculum connects the core scientific concepts to topical issues," he said. "Certain politicians feel that they don't like the concept of climate change. I hope this isn't a sign of a political agenda being exercised."

That last line made me chuckle.

A Bit Of Fun.

2011-06-12T14:06:00.003+01:00

Yet Serious, Too.

It is very hard to determine what might catch peoples' imaginations and take off as a peaceful but significant protest against the establishment. That includes local councils, MPs, MEPs, trade unionists, Global Corporations and so on. A significant act of quiet defiance and a substantial statement of people power. I have an idea. Whether it could succeed, I don't know.

It is that the people of The UK, or even Europe and The USA as well, have a "public" day off. Everybody decides, on a chosen day, to not work, (emergency services only, excused) not travel or spend one penny of money. Not a National strike but a people day off! It is probably a daft idea but it does appeal to my ageing sense of frustration. Just imagine if it did take off. Say, out of the air, the 29nth of September. On that day WE decide to have a day off. No money, fuel, work absolutely zilch.

Once one day happened, WE could seek to CHOOSE the next one! Demands might ensue whereby THEY would be forced to LISTEN. We could then label days off. Bankers' protest day, Climate change protest day, EU referendum protest day even "we want an election" day! Whatever the protest it would only work if it captured majority approval so potentially self-regulating. The more people took the day off the greater the "petition".

Naturally many people might well like the idea of extra days off, anyway! Such fun!

Abuse of the law and public inertia

2011-06-11T09:44:00.001+01:00

Or, The State We’re In.

Our current condition throws up some examples of how power crazed bureacurats are falsely charging themselves with the power to stamp on individuals who rightly stand up against bureaucracy and public service failings and challenge unaccountable and unsanctioned decision making. Two cases make the papers today that should be spread far and wide. But as always there is little or no ‘follow through’ by the journalists to connect the dots and display the bigger picture for people, so we have to rely on the blogosphere to do that.

Firstly we have the case of Jacqui Thompson, author of ‘Camarthenshire Planning Problems and More’. She tells the story of how she was arrested for allegedly breaching the peace this week for daring to film part of a County Council meeting from the public gallery to bring events to a wider audience.

Ms Thompson then goes on in a follow up blog post to describe her treatment after her arrest and presents readers with an evident example of the law being abused by Councillors and the police to suit the ends of the establishment. A polite refusal to acquiesce to an unreasonable demand – namely to stop filming when filming is not banned by the Council’s own standing orders – is not a breach of the peace.

A legal action for false arrest seems justified as to deny this woman her liberty for wishing to highlight failings in the supposedly democratic process is an abuse under the law. There was no need for the Council to suspend proceedings and no grounds to instructing her to leave the public gallery. The police were not only heavy handed, they were resorting to stereotype number one, that the establishment is in need of protection and the ordinary taxpaying member of the public is the aggressor.

Secondly we have the case of Daniel Sencier, author of ‘Prostate Cancer – My Journey!’ and a former cancer patient at the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle. He tells the story of how North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust are bullying him using threats of legal action for daring to speak out about the experience of newly diagnosed Prostate Cancer patients at his local hospital in Carlisle.

The Trust is giving the impression of having more power than it actually possesses, as once you read the content of their solicitor’s letter to Mr Sencier you can see how little they can do to prevent a protest they believed Mr Sencier was planning. But the abuse becomes evident when you see the Trust’s threat against Mr Sencier if his blog contains what they consider to be:

…unsubstantiated criticism of the care you received at the Trust the Trust will have no hesitation in considering taking legal action against you

Criticism is subjective and if Mr Sencier considers the care he received was substandard then he has the right to say so. It is his opinion and there should not be any need for his opinion to be substantiated by anything. At any rate, as if to underline the blowhard position the Trust is only saying they won’t hesitate to consider taking legal action. They know they will almost certainly have no grounds for doing so, but that doesn’t stop them trying to intimidate a dissatisfied member of the public into silence.

This is the reality of Britain in the 21st Century. We supposedly boast the mother of all Parliaments and the finest model for legal systems that has been much duplicated around the world. But what we see here is not only examples of the corruption of our democracy but the extent of the assault on our liberty and individual rights by the State in service of its own interests against ours.

For how much longer will the public stay silent on matters such as these and shy away from taking back from the establishment the power that is ours by right? It cannot continue. We need to make a stand.

(Given the importance of these issues this has been cross posted from the Autonomous Mind blog).

The MF Five A Day

2011-06-10T19:06:00.000+01:00

Sometimes daily but always five. Here are another five links to recent posts that I've found around the independent blogosphere. It's always difficult to choose just five, as there is so much excellent work out there, but I think you'll find today's selection a good variety ...

Well Listen Then!

2011-06-10T10:26:00.001+01:00

If Not To Bloggers, Then Here.

Nice for us to be proven right but I doubt anything will happen. Just keep coughing up, folks!

The big society: Don’t try this at home

2011-06-08T11:58:00.005+01:00

When David Cameron first uttered the phrase ‘the big society’, even my jaded ears pricked up by a micron or so. Did he mean, I wondered, the rollback of government? Had some wonk in a focus group accidentally chanced across the idea that the voter might actually prefer to have less state-funded botheration in her life rather than more? Of course, now we know that what the Prime Interferer intended was to turn half the workforce into a sort of mass unpaid internship, this seems laughable, but it’s still instructive to note what happens when small groups of individuals strive to maintain their own communities without the harness of centralised government.

I’ve owned a 40-foot narrow boat for over ten years, seven of which I lived on the canal.

This type of domicile is a legal grey area, and I had a small piece published on the subject in Standpoint last year. In a nutshell, boaters are the greenest people outside of eco-fanatics living like self-righteous Hobbits in solar-powered bunkers. The sound of applause and encouragement from the public sector, though, is far from deafening.

Now, a group of boaters in and around London's Lea Valley are being actively threatened with the type of social cleansing which will soon spread to other canals if successful there. Included in the target area are boaters who are raising families afloat. British Waterways [BW], who administer the canals but think they own them, are answerable to DEFRA, which should give you an idea of the level of competence at play here. BW is one of the high-profile logs on the so-called "bonfire of the quangos", and is seeking to escape the flames by taking on charitable status. Before it suffers this indignity, however, it wants to settle some old scores.

Under cover of the Olympics and the desire to rid the area of brothels, squats and other socially undesirable dwellings, BW is seeking new powers to remove the right of boaters to live as they choose on the waterways. Though this should not be seen as one of the Evil Tory Cuts™, it has to be said that boaters tend to have a very left-wing default position, and it won’t stop them doing just that. A blog which flagged up the plight of the Lea Valley boaters, for example, was criticised for displaying a "No to AV" button despite the help it was offering. But this attempt to rid the canals of everyone but families on expensive hire-boat holidays and weekend boaters with shiny brass chimneys and yachting club caps goes right back to the glory days of the Blairocracy, although it's accelerating under the current coalition.

Boaters, though, are a resourceful bunch, and are fighting back with meetings, press coverage, legal consultations, alternative plans for waterways development and a general attitude that they are not going to take it. Canal dwellers probably do as much for the upkeep of the towpath as BW, and my boat licence pays BW to do their work. I've seen boaters moor up and immediately clean the rubbish off the towpath, something I've done myself. You get the occasional headbanger who attempts to turn the canalside into a cross between a car-boot sale in Albania and a Gdansk shipyard, but generally boaters are attentive to their local environment and, as mentioned, the lifestyle is so green you could play snooker on it.

Governments of our modern, third-way, neosocialist, trickle-up variety hate this kind of autonomy. All those people with no addresses. How can they be fined for putting the wrong recycling in the wrong bin? What are they doing growing their own vegetables and producing their own heat? What if they evade the census, on which I have not appeared since I was a small boy. How is the nanny state supposed to function, intrude and hector if the children are learning to walk by themselves?

So, three cheers for the big society. Just don’t be foolish enough to actually try it.

How Ironic

2011-06-08T10:03:00.001+01:00

Poverty Overcome!

From within the soul!

2011-06-07T16:03:00.000+01:00

The Failygraph tried it some time back, offering readers their own blogs, but now The Guardian is trying a different approach - but with the same objective, to dominate the blogosphere.

It is interesting to see quite how much the independent blogosphere worries the MSM, with even The Guardian acknowledging that there are "many bloggers out there who are often just as good as Guardian journalists – if not better – at spotting stories and responding quickly and imaginatively to them".

Unable to up its game and thus to compete, it is adopting the usual corporate trick of trying to corral the bloggers into a pen, where they can be housetrained and controlled.

But, of course, such is the poverty of corporate thinking, that it ends up recruiting the dross, unable – as always – to deal with the real independents. They will continue to provide the real thinking, and the best content, while the MSM continues its steady decline to obscurity.

Climate Industry fails.

2011-06-07T11:04:00.001+01:00

Or Is It Too Big To Fail?

What a morning of contradictory issues. This piece of pure common sense slams smack into this arrant rubbish. The Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security is a giant and expensive, self-interested, global quango. One of its leading snouts at the table is our very own Sir John Beddington. Exactly one of the wealthy, scaremongering, leftie placement figures spoken of in the first link.

Just as with the banking collapse we are being forced to face penury, cold and hunger not through "climate change", carbon emissions or other natural phenomenon but through the business created in carbon trading and fossil fuel price inflation. Every ignorant, pig headed plonker from Ghastly Gore to Hoon of Huhnes, via Bliar, Brown, Cameron et al, should be forced to read and then eat and swallow the first linked article.

That article gives us scarce relief from the endless diatribe of fear politics, so typically shown in the second link. Savour the contrast while you can. Dissent will be squashed, mark my words.

MF Five A Day

2011-06-07T07:48:00.003+01:00

Here we go with another fine mixture of posts that I've found on my travels around the independent blogosphere. Some thought provoking, some entertaining but that's just my opinion ... see what you think ;-)

A start to Blogging

2011-06-06T21:46:00.003+01:00

It's all down to money, believe it or not.

It started with a frank discussion with my eldest daughter about the money she owed to credit card companies and banks. I endeavoured to attempt to help her as best as I could. After a bit of research I found an internet forum that purported to have a formula to regain the high charges that were being levied on her. However that forum was infested with Moderators that knew best, even when they were proved wrong so I left that forum when I was invited to join a new forum made up of those dissatisfied with the forum I'd left.

I thoroughly enjoyed being a member there, and with the exchange of experience I managed to claw back a large amount of money for my daughter (Bye the way Santander, you’re quite useless. You didn’t actually need to reimburse my daughter twice!). I also helped claw money back for others caught in the same predicament.

After eighteen months there, with many online friends, they opened an internal blogspot. This is where I found I could let my thoughts expand and run riot. Eventually I realised that I was only writing to a narrow audience that didn't understand my passion for writing about other than bank penalty charges. Not their fault at all. They were wonderful people doing a sterling job. But I had to move on.

Somehow I came across Blogger, and with great trepidation wrote my first post. This of course, was a heap of manure, but it is was my first foray into the Blogosphere. And have I learnt so much, in so little time. I've had to learn to add hyperlinks, imbed video and pictures, make up a blogroll, try and answer comments in polite and erudite way, and so much more.

Luckily I found out most of these from other bloggers who have been keen to help new bloggers. I'd like to pay a little tribute to those bloggers that have opened my eyes to the sheer delusion that politicians are here to serve us, the climate change scam, that there are fake charities, useless bloodsucking quangos, the EU and its money stealing devices, and numerous other issues of which the general public seem unaware.

I can never match the top bloggers, but I'll do my best to improve and stay the course. And you and I know it. The Blogosphere is grinding the MSM into the dust in a slow but inexorable way.

Micturition in the same pot

2011-06-06T16:25:00.003+01:00

I've had my doubts about Tim Montgomerie and his "Uncle Tom" website Conservative Home. But those doubts are now fully supported as we see his blog join The Guardian as a "content partner" – alongside "feminists" and the neo Marxist Left Foot Forwards.

And, to consummate the nuptials, we have a vomit-inducing piece from the self-same Tim Montgomerie, headed "Cameron must start worrying about Europe" - sitting on the Guardian website. It tells us that "David Cameron already has the NHS and crime on his list of challenges. But his Eurosceptic credentials are widely doubted".

This is straight out of the muppet school of politics, the fare of the fool Oborne, and an insult to the intelligence of any reader who can muster more brain cells than Montgomerie has fingers. All together now: Euroslime Dave has no Eurosceptic credentials. He is a rabid Europhile.

However, the main news of this particular post is the marriage of The Guardian and Conservative Home. Had anyone had ventured that this might happen, even a year ago, they would have been dismissed as a blathering madman. But now, impossible things come to pass ... proving once again that the political classes are all partaking in joint micturition exercises, mostly on the rest of us.

As another one sells out, though - corrupting the word "independent" - we need our own voices, more than ever. At least not being on the ConHome blogroll is now a badge of honour.

The MF Five A Day

2011-06-06T07:41:00.001+01:00

Here's my selection of fine offerings from other independent bloggers, for today, which I hope you will find the time to take a look at. I'm sure you won't be disappointed ...

Some suggestions for the direction of Independent Political Bloggers

2011-06-04T11:50:00.005+01:00

In the comments to The Filthy Engineer's post, “Lies, lies, and those manifestos” Richard asked for views regarding his original vision for Independent Political Bloggers which was to establish:

“a site about independent political bloggers and blogging, to promote the genre - a sort of noticeboard combined with "chat room"”.

If I remember correctly (I haven't found the original, so I may have dreamt it), Richard wanted to promote the disparate independent bloggers as a strong and credible, journalistic alternative to the churnalistic MSM.

If that's what he said, I think it's a great objective. If he didn't say it and I just made it up, I still think it's a great objective.

I believe there's a hunger for Richard's proposal. Unfortunately though, the actual business of blogging is pretty dull and once we've provided the bios that Richard suggested, there's probably not a great deal more to say. With nothing to say, our readers will desert and blogs without readers have absolutely no hope of influencing opinion. And so on balance, while I think the bios are a good idea and should be retained, my guess is that IPB can only survive on a diet of regular political comment.

The other difficulties that IPB faces are (i) that we are unlikely to give up our individual blogs and will want to reserve our best material for them and (ii) that there is already an excellent 'super-blog' in the shape of Orphans of Liberty.

With all that in mind, these are my own suggestions for a possible way forward. Hopefully, they will stimulate a discussion and more suggestions from other bloggers:

we need to make up our minds over the objective(s) of IPB. Given that the concept of opposition has all but disappeared from Parliament, I favour developing a coherent bloggers' opposition as a genuine focus of dissent for all of those who feel disenfranchised by the current political model;
to this end, our blogroll should feature all bloggers and MSM journalists whose writing is sympathetic to our objectives;
to get the ball rolling, encourage all sympathetic bloggers to follow OldRightie's example and produce a ranked 'manifesto' listing the top 10 policies they would most like to see changed/scrapped/introduced. Based on the results, we could produce an overall top 10 on which IPB blogs would concentrate;
For material, we all guarantee one original blog per week or use IPB as a 'best-of' site. In addition, we could – on a pre-moderated basis - include ad-hoc contributions from non-bloggers;
the narrower focus and objective should prevent us from replicating the effort at the Orphans of Liberty site;
as Richard has already suggested, we should avoid ranking the individual blogs but we do need to stimulate and record site approvals;
we all actively 'market' the site on our own blogs.

Over to you!

Time Traveller's website is at Adventures in Time Travel

The MF five a day

2011-06-04T11:00:00.001+01:00

HERE.

Do not feed the clogs

2011-06-04T10:37:00.002+01:00

One of the key differences between websites of diverse character and blogs is, perhaps, the latter comprises a community – especially the political blogs – known loosely as the "blogosphere".

In fact, there is not one community, but several, rendering the blogosphere a highly fragmented entity, with little cross-over. The left and the right, for instance, occupy their own spaces, and there are specialist communities, such as the climate change fraternity, again split between the "deniers" and the "believers".

What makes the community are two things. The first is a commonality of interest. But the second is linkage, through dynamic links in the text of posts, and in the blogrolls – the list of preferred blogs, to which the individual blogger draws attention. These links, more than anything else, pull the blogosphere together.

Within the political blogging "set", though, there is another division, between the givers and the takers – the feeders and the parasites. Broadly, this amounts to the links offered, and their nature. Some blogs are generous with their links, picking up other sites across a wide spectrum, with a comprehensive blogroll.

Here, there is an informal convention on reciprocation. If a blog links to another on its blogroll, the recipient returns the favour and does likewise. Textual links are a different matter, but one tries to offer links to sites that have something to say, and are toiling in the same vineyard.

Those are the givers, as opposed to the takers, the parasites – usually those with a high profile which receive multiple references from other blogs, but do reciprocate and favour only a very limited number of blogs on their blogrolls and with textual links.

The classic offender here is the Guido Fawkes blog, which has a very small blogroll and rarely links to other sites. It builds its circulation on the back of other blogs, but puts very little back – sharing a parasitic existence with the likes of Conservative Home and some others, who form their own exclusive, self-referential claque.

But a particularly malignant sub-set comprises the "clogs". As is the blog, a composite word - built from "weB LOG" – so is the "clog", built from "Corporate bLOG". Mainly media sites, these are the true parasites, who rarely link to others outside their own corporate domains, yet benefit hugely from inwards links.

This refusal to link is quite often a matter of deliberate policy. Journalists who generously include links to independent bloggers, find the links removed by editors, following their business policy. Between them, the corporates – who see the independents as a threat – are making a bid ownership of the blogosphere. Rather like their supermarket cousins, they are attempting to freeze out the independents.

Inexplicably, though, the independents often help the corporates out, linking freely to their parasitic clogs – who will never reciprocate – and ignoring their fellow independents. Thus does some fine writing in the independent blogosphere struggle for an audience, while the clogs prosper.

In what is a battle for survival, therefore, independents can help each other out, by favouring other independents in their links, and being extremely sparing in their links to the clogs, the claque and other parasites. Basically, the convention of reciprocation should be a guide, leaving the parasites to feed their own.

In short, do not feed the clogs.

Kids - complicated or simple consequence?

2011-06-04T07:48:00.005+01:00

This from 2006, not today but as ever the reality is ignored. Family life and dare I say marriage, has been traduced to a less than common estate. Acres of print, political pamphlets and the myriad of manifesto lies, have all combined to bring us to an unhealthy state. Meddling by Government, politicos massaging the big corporate chains and advertising executives are the problem. Not you or I.

Meanwhile the grip in high places of inadequate males and their predilections, there are too many like this to ignore, is slowly taking us to paedo marches for equal rights every bit as a much a bandwagon as "Gay" rights.

My generation kicked off the "sexual revolution" but those of us able to spot the selfishness and exploitative nature of this hedonistic short termism in morality have, I venture to suggest, done better than those who pursued eternal youth and who now are very ridiculous, burnt out plonkers. These same individuals however went into power. I rest my case.

Your EU Government.

2011-06-03T09:49:00.002+01:00

Where Would We Be Without Them?

For starters wed have this building available for flats or a hotel complex. However, we would also suffer the loss of this crowd. There are seven Vice-presidents, note. Each on a salary and expenses circa hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. The basic pay of a commissioner is around £210,000 ergo we begin at five and a half million quid before allowances and pension costs are considered. What do we, you and I get for this largesse? Starters for 10!

We learnt a little something of their benefits yesterday.

The MF Five A Day

2011-06-03T09:14:00.001+01:00

Here's another selection of posts from around the independent blogosphere, which I thought were well worthy of 'a share', and it's good to see that 'Mummy' is back ... doing what she does best ;-)

Lies, lies, and those manifestos

2011-06-02T20:51:00.001+01:00

Now this is my first post here so treat me gently.

Why do we bother to vote? Because we are promised that a political party can better our lot in life.

In the past we would have elections, and before they were carried out, the political parties would lay out their aspirations in their Manifesto. In the distant past, that manifesto was treated as a document that, we the people, could depend on to a large extent to judge the parties on their commitment to policies. It was easy in those days. You chose the manifesto that you agreed to, and voted accordingly. Bye and large it worked. Politicians of that bygone age, in the whole, usually tried to deliver those policies. That was the day of honest politics.

Now, sadly we have no men of honour inhabiting the Mother of all parliaments. We have career politicians who have never served in any competitive private sector environment and are just after power for power's sake.

What is the point of these manifestos? If they can be torn up immediately after an election, why bother drawing them up in the first place? I would like to see them as a legal document and any deviation challenged in the courts. Of course there would be some problems left behind by a previous governments policies that would have to stay in place for a short while.
Example.

If you went into a shop and saw a TV and the blurb stated that it could do all manner of wonderful things, you would buy it, in the belief that you had bought a product that would suit your need. However if your TV failed to do those most wondrous of things that you’d been promised, you would be entitled to a refund or replacement under Sale of Goods and services act. And most certainly wouldn’t wait five years before returning it.
Example.

If you saw an advert that intimated that ingesting cyanide would give you eternal life, what would your relatives do after burying you? (In my case. A paupers grave. But that’s another story). They would very quickly (I hope) contact the Advertising Standards Authority to have that advert removed.

So why do we have to put up with governments who promise the earth, but don't deliver?

So my point is, can we have an act that would allow us to return the government from whence they came, namely opposition?

"The repeal of Governments and useless hangers on Act" maybe.

Or can we just hang all 650 of them? (I have more than enough piano wire in the garage.).

The MF Five A Day

2011-06-02T07:57:00.000+01:00

Once again we turn to a quintuplet of independent bloggers for a selection of informative news, opinions and entertainment. Far better value than anything you'll find in the MSM. Read on ...

Featured Blog: Adventures in Time Travel

2011-06-01T16:50:00.004+01:00

In the circles in which I move, I find that few people are prepared to discuss overtly political issues – on the rare occasions that friends and colleagues take a position, it is usually a view of the world predetermined by an ingrained political allegiance, the only modifications permitted being those scripted by the BBC and/or their daily newspaper of choice.

The emergence of the political blog proved to be a revelation, especially with the commenting facility providing an opportunity to weigh and exchange views. Having our own ingrained views persuasively challenged is enlightening. Having others put into words what we have been feeling is liberating: self-doubt may not entirely disappear but at least we know that we are not alone when holding an opinion that runs counter to the prevailing MSM orthodoxies.

After a long period of deliberation, I began publishing my own blog, Adventures in Time Travel, in March this year. It deals with general political matters affecting the UK in what I hope is a way that contributes to unsettling some of the constructs by which others seek to control us. My blog won't change the world but in conjunction with others, I'd like to think it could eventually play its part.

I write from no particular political perspective - although I'm regularly mistaken for a conservative. I usually start from a position that our entire political system favours interests other than those of the electorate: we desperately need an opposition. I loath political correctness because it is divisive and antithetical to freedom of speech. I'm pro-Europe but anti-EU. I am pro-sanctuary but anti-unfettered immigration. I become especially exercised by injustice, the suppression of our freedoms and the climate scam.

I try to publish at least once a day although weekends and commitments elsewhere may occasionally interfere. And every now and again - usually when Johann Hari writes about climate change - I may suffer a blinding rage that will temporarily inhibit my ability to form a coherent sentence. Comments and conversations are always welcome – so please do drop in when you can.

The second fifty

2011-06-01T15:24:00.006+01:00

This, then is the second fifty, in alphabetical order:

A Wednesday fourteen

2011-06-01T14:53:00.001+01:00

With an additional fourteen independent British political blogs, that completes our second fifty, again illustrating the depth and variety of the genre. I will amalgamate these to produce a list of the second fifty, and then the first hundred.

England's freedome

We also have the MF five for today's selection. And, on the site so far, we have eight authors signed up in what is to be a blog about bloggers, run by bloggers, all to promote the concept of independent political blogging.

More authors are welcome. Just drop your e-mail in the comments.

A Wish List

2011-06-01T10:23:00.002+01:00

Globalisation stopped.
Food distribution as aid, without cash
Western democracies start from scratch.
A total withdrawal of Western military from everywhere but their own countries.
The dismantlement of the EU.
Same for The UN.
Same for NATO.
Corruption made a capital offence
Murder and paedophilia the same.
No politician to hold high office for more than 5 years and NO fat job afterwards, only before.

The MF Five A Day

2011-06-01T07:58:00.001+01:00

Here's another selection of posts, from five different independent bloggers, which I'm sure you will find either informative, entertaining or humorous ...

maybe all three, even!

Another dozen

2011-05-31T12:20:00.000+01:00

To our collection of independent British political bloggers, another twelve are listed below. We are well on our way to the first hundred-mark:

The problem for all of us is the volume, and sorting the wheat from the chaff. You could easily spend the whole day touring the blogosphere and, while you would pick up some superb material, there would also be a lot of dross.

However, I am no great fan of the ranking system that Iain Dale used ... how do you rate one blog as better than another? But, I'm minded to look at grading, such as the star system, widely used elsewhere. Three criteria come to mind: writing (quality of); frequency; and presentation. A technical marking scheme should not be too hard to devise.

Combine that with perhaps symbols to denote specialisms, and there may be the germs of system that would help see off the likes of Huff-Puff and the MSM, which would like to take over the blogosphere, giving guidance to the reader who is, after all, the "customer".

What think you ... what say you?

The MF Five A Day

2011-05-31T07:12:00.002+01:00

Following on from this recent post, I'm introducing a new feature which I hope to maintain on a regular basis. It's quite simple really ... a selection of five posts from independent bloggers that I hope you will find amusing, entertaining and/or informitive.

So here we go with the first five ... enjoy ;-)

A Few More To Be Going On With

2011-05-30T16:28:00.002+01:00

I have selected twenty or so blogs from my ‘daily reads’, which don’t yet appear in Richard’s list, to help you further extend your journey of discovery into the excellent writing, wit and independent opinion that the political blogosphere has to offer.

Enjoy ;-)

An invitation

2011-05-30T15:38:00.000+01:00

Now that it is up and running, this site can accept up to 100 authors. We are now two, which means the system can accept another 98.

This blog, I feel, should be a joint property, and I would be more than happy to register any other independent political blogger on the site, giving them equal rights and co-ownership. If anyone wants to drop me a note on the comments, smoke signals or whatever, I'll send you an e-mail and get the process started.

I'm also thinking of doing a blogger-a-day feature: 200 words description, a screen grab of the site, and a link. Anyone who fancies kicking it off, send me their 200 words and I'll post it (subject to all the usual caveats) on EURef and this site.

Fighting fifty

2011-05-30T09:09:00.000+01:00

The first tranche of fifty independent political bloggers. That is fifty (more, in reality, as some are group blogs) real people, with something to offer:

A fantastic fourteen

2011-05-30T08:35:00.000+01:00

Here is another selection of independent political bloggers – fourteen this time in order to bring the total to fifty. I'll post that list, in alphabetical order, in this directory, but here is the fourteen to be going on with:

What strikes you is the huge range, the quality of much of the work, and the freshness. There is some clever, original writing here, passion, and wit. There is also – something the MSM have long ceased to provide – some really specialist knowledge.

Another twelve

2011-05-28T14:40:00.000+01:00

It says much for the genre that the MSM and the political élites have invested a great deal in trying to destroy it. But despite those attempts, the independent political blogosphere (IPB) survives and prospers – here are another twelve to be going on with:

Not all the writing is brilliant, and some is erratic – only in mediocrity will you find consistency, though. But to suggest that the independent political blogosphere is in any way lacking in variety, depth and fine writing is a blood libel. It beats the low drone of the MSM into a cocked hat.

Bring on the bloggers

2011-05-28T08:20:00.000+01:00

The art of political writing is alive and well, residing in the independent political blogosphere, where it is ignored by the MSM and the political classes alike. Here are twelve blogs to be getting on with.

There are many more besides - they are the authentic voice of free Britain.

Independent Political Bloggers

Safe European homes: After the crash

Oh Dear!

The Enslavemt.

Plagues And Disease Have No Boundaries.

A Very Simple Guide To The European Union.

When Salvage is worth the price.

The folly of the exploiters

World Leaders' Guide To Debt.

Fracking

Following on.

Politically correct games: Even a draw sees both sides lose

Chinese Lessons, Anyone?

Unoccupied Territory: The rage of Caliban

Europe after the rain

Bailouts Abound.

The Tories, (Buggin's) Turn.

You Never Know.

Desperate For Tax Revenue.

Riots in the real world

Rioting, Part two.

Rioting.

Annual Eton Sports Day.

Right On.

When Somebody Tries.

Norway. The country with dignity.

As Ever.

Here's A Thought.

The Surprising Inevitability.

Connections

A Blessed Relief.

A Biblical Waste.

Squeaky voices

If Honour Existed.

Already?

A Difficult Definition

Media Frenzy.

This is what happens when you give the job to amateurs

Doing the honest thing

Fairy stories

A Speech From An Accomplished Derrière.

Ever Stopped To Wonder............

Disappointment Assuaged.......

A threat to our security

Nice and stealthy does it..

Adult news values

What happens when Greece defaults. Here are a few things:

Restoring the reputation of science

A Bit Of Fun.

Abuse of the law and public inertia

The MF Five A Day

Well Listen Then!

The big society: Don’t try this at home

How Ironic

Climate Industry fails.

MF Five A Day

A start to Blogging

Micturition in the same pot

The MF Five A Day

Some suggestions for the direction of Independent Political Bloggers

The MF five a day

Do not feed the clogs

Kids - complicated or simple consequence?

Your EU Government.

The MF Five A Day

Lies, lies, and those manifestos

The MF Five A Day

Featured Blog: Adventures in Time Travel

The second fifty

A Wednesday fourteen

A Wish List

The MF Five A Day

Lefty Politicians Who Look Like Tortoises #94

World Tobacco Control Circle Jerk Day 2011

Holier Than Thou Blogosphere

Blogging Starts To Count

And we need the MSM why?

Another dozen

The MF Five A Day

A Few More To Be Going On With